Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:00]:

In today's episode, I sit down with Mariana Lewis, a professional Tarot counselor, scholar, and creator of Persephone Sister, a platform for psychospiritual education and guidance. Mariana formulated the Archetypal Tarot approach, which she teaches globally in her Archetypal Tarot School and other programs. Mariana is also the co host of the Sorora Mystica podcast, which explores the great symbols of life, and she's a faculty member at the Young Arcademy. Mariana shares how tarot can help women reclaim their inner authority, how it relates to Jungian concepts, and the biggest mistake people make when using the Tarot. I learned so much in this conversation, and I know that you will, too. Let's dive in. Hello, beautiful listeners, and welcome back to the Goddess School Podcast. And today I am very excited to sit down with Mariana Lewis, and many of you will know her from her Instagram account, Perc, Stephanie's sister.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:01]:

And we're going to talk about all things Tarot, young symbolism, myth. And I'm just so excited to dive into this conversation. So thank you, Mariana, for joining us today.

Mariana Louis [00:01:12]:

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation, too.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:16]:

Now, before we even dive in, I would just love to. I know your Instagram handle is Persephone Sister. Persephone happens to be one of my favorite goddesses. Can you just tell me a little bit about. About that, how. Yeah, that came to be?

Mariana Louis [00:01:28]:

I love this question. My sister's name is Persephone. Oh. So, yeah. So it wasn't. It wasn't that. I know it wasn't too much of a mystery. Growing up, she was a lot more popular than I was, and so I just kind of always had that tag of everyone knew me as Persephone Sister when I was kind of settling on, like, you know, Instagram, what do I call myself? It.

Mariana Louis [00:01:51]:

It just felt so appropriate because it was already something I carried my whole life. And also, Persephone is the goddess of duality. Right. So I love sitting in that space between. Between all of these complex, beautiful things. So it just felt so perfect.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:06]:

Oh, fantastic. That's interesting because your account and all of your teachings, and I also love your YouTube and podcast very much. Does align with Persephone the goddess. So I thought that it was, you know, more specific to that, but wow, that's. That's amazing.

Mariana Louis [00:02:22]:

It was just kind of a confluence of all these things. It's just like, oh, that's the per. Obviously, it just worked out.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:27]:

Yes, obviously, it's the perfect thing. So I. I was telling you a little Bit before I hit record that I'm actually not that familiar with tarot. I mean, I know what it is and I've been following you for a long time because I love your take on young and symbolism, the divine feminine and mythology. But I've just never always wanted to. Never really had the capacity for tarot. But I know the women in my community, I know it's for many of them, like their morning practice is that they pull a tarot card. But for us laymen, can you just outline a little bit like what tarot is?

Mariana Louis [00:02:59]:

Yeah, Tarot, it's something that is so popular today and has really risen in popularity over the last three decades, four or five decades maybe even. And it is this collection of cards, 78 cards that derive from a really old playing card deck from the 15th century in Italy. And what's really interesting about the tarot is that it is a playing card deck. It was used in games and it, you know, it's not very different from our normal playing card deck. But they had the addition of these things that we call the trumps or the major arcana, which are these 22 picture cards that show these really interesting figures and symbols that are totally unrelated from the normal playing cards that we're used to working with. And so it's been a mystery for centuries of what are these about, why were they added? What's the significance? And there's a lot of theories out there. But this is why I think that the tarot has really captured our archetypal imagination. Because we have the normal ace through 10 and the page knight, queen, king.

Mariana Louis [00:04:06]:

These are kind of standard and decks. But then we have the added layer of these mysteries, this path of the fool that we call it sometimes. 22 Major Arcana cards that show this mystery of life and individuation. So it really has just become this tool for both divination and occults work, but also inner exploration and psychospiritual reflection. And so I think that's why it's, it's drawn so many people, because it's magical, but it's also practical. We also use it for our, our inner growth. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:04:38]:

Oh, I love that. It's so interesting that you just said that it's for divination and inner exploration. Because that was actually like one of my next questions that I wanted to ask you was like, how do you use it? Do you. You tend to use it like with. And you can even. Maybe it's different with yourself than your clients, but like how do you see these two Merging both divination and this inner exploration.

Mariana Louis [00:04:59]:

Yeah, so my approach. I approach the cards really, through. I call it like an archetypal or psychospiritual lens, meaning that my focus is always on the inner exploration part. When we're using it for divination, we have to be very brave. We have to have a really strong backbone for that. Because anytime anyone's dabbling in divination, that implies that we're trying to peek into the future and know what's to come. The future is not always happy and wonderful. And so we have to be able to say, okay, I can accept the good with the bad, which not all of us are really that excited about doing.

Mariana Louis [00:05:34]:

So my use of it is always more for how does it support us? Rather than, yes, might tell us something good is happening, but it also might tell us something challenging is happening. And that's. That's. Can be a little bit tricky sometimes. What I like to think about with the idea of what divination is. The root of the word divination comes from the Latin divinare, which means to be inspired by a God. And if we apply, like a Jungian lens to what we mean by gods, we're really talking about archetypes, these inner figures of power and authority that we're always in conversation with. So in a way, I like to think of the practice of divination as like peeking into the soul.

Mariana Louis [00:06:13]:

You know, it's like this divine vision almost of looking inward and seeing how that at the same time reflects what's going on in the outer world outside of us. Because this is one of the most incredible mysteries of divination, is that it works on the principle of synchronicity, which I very much believe in. And synchronicity is this idea that comes from Carl Jung. And basically he believed that there is this. He called it the unus mundus, this one world, this mysterious connection between all things where the psyche and matter are working cooperation, and the. The link between them is meaning. There's meaning between what happens on the outside and how that influences us on the inside, and vice versa. And so that's what divination really is to me.

Mariana Louis [00:06:58]:

So I kind of take out the predictive nature of it in my practice. And how I teach that is not to say that you're not going to, once in a while, pull the death card, and then a death that happens, you know, around you, that happens sometimes. But I like to focus on how does it support us and how does it help us. Alchemize what's going on in the inner world and the outer world at the same time. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:19]:

Oh, that's beautiful. One thing I would love to get your take on. So in my community too, and, you know, even, like, on my podcast and some of my writing, I've really been starting to question a little bit the narrative of, like, self help. While we're always looking to others to give us instruction or tell us the five ways that we need to have this relationship or more money.

Mariana Louis [00:07:36]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:37]:

And one of the things that I really seem like I like about the tarot is that it encourages you to go inward and come up with your. With your own inner wisdom. Like, do you have any thoughts, like, how does tarot fit in with, like, this self help, fix it culture?

Mariana Louis [00:07:50]:

Oh, yeah. It's a really good question. I think that very often when we're drawn to the tarot, it's because we're looking for a place to get answers right? We have. We. No one likes to sit in the tension of living. That tension that's like, I don't know what to do next, or I don't know why this is happening. I get clients all the time that come to me that say, I had this terrible breakup or I just lost my job or something really awful happened. What's the meaning in this? We don't want to sit in the.

Mariana Louis [00:08:18]:

I don't know what to do with this thing. And so we go to the tarot to get the answer, like, oh, this happened to you because of this, or this is how it's going to resolve. And what I talk about all the time with my students and in my upcoming book, I talk about this a lot, that the point of using the cards is to get to the better question. The question we didn't know that we were really meaning to ask. So if we can allow ourselves to discover what that question is. So, for example, if we did just lose our job and we're saying, well, why did this happen to me? What's this all about? The deeper question is like, how do I deal with this insecurity in this moment in my life? Like, that's the question we're actually trying to hold space for. And so the best way to use the cards is to allow them to guide us to what that question is. So it doesn't fix anything, it doesn't solve anything.

Mariana Louis [00:09:02]:

It doesn't give us an answer. And that for a lot of people is like, well, then why even use it? But the whole point is that it helps us live in the tension of existing rather than get the answer. So we get out of the tension because no one gets out of the tension of living. That's something we all have to carry.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:09:19]:

Yes, that's definitely something we talk a lot about too. Like, can we tolerate the discomfort of being in the unknown? Yeah. I love how I never really thought of the tarot this way, but about how it helps us ask the right questions. Because I've also really been thinking about that concept lately. Like in Bluebeard, right. The young sister has the key, and the key kind of represents like the questions, what is it that, you know, we should be asking? Or what is it that, you know, we might not want to know, but we still should know. Can you talk a little bit more? Because I really feel like questions are the key to kind of awakening our consciousness and how the tarot helps with that.

Mariana Louis [00:09:57]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I really like the quote by Rilke from his letters to young Poets. Like the super famous quote where he says, you know, he's talking to this aspiring poet and the poet's like, how do I become a master poet? You know, tell me all the ways. And he tells him that the point is to live the questions. If we're living the questions themselves and we're. We're pursuing them and we're honoring them, then we just one day live into the answer. It just happens. Rather than it being this thing that we have to solve and then become and then alchemize that.

Mariana Louis [00:10:30]:

It doesn't, doesn't happen that way. We have to go on. That's what myth tells us. We have to go on the journey to get to the resolution. There's no such thing as understanding what we're supposed to do and then just doing it. The whole path is the point. So I think that with the tarot, it really puts us in conversation with the unconscious, which is the point. We're supposed to pull these cards.

Mariana Louis [00:10:50]:

I like to tell my students all the time. You know, when we start the tarot, we often have a very complicated practice because we get a good guidebook and it has like this amazing 12 card spread. And we're like, I want to try that. And then we're completely overwhelmed because it's a lot of information, a lot of cards. And I tell my students to just pull two, that's it, just two cards, and sit with those two cards. Ask how they're talking to each other, ask how they contradict each other, ask how they're in agreement with each other, Ask what they bring up in you or how you Resist them. Following all these questions are going to stimulate responses from the unconscious, which is going to help us see. You know, you might pull something like the ace of cups, which is a card of beauty and love, but you feel really miserable right now.

Mariana Louis [00:11:30]:

And so you might see that and say, well, this is a lie, because I don't feel that. But then the question is, how is this missing in my life? How am I participating in being distant from this experience? And just by kind of following that curiosity, we get to questions we didn't consider before. We get in touch with something going on unconsciously that now gives us a path to greater consciousness. So we have just more agency, power, and feel more grounded in our lives.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:11:55]:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And that was gonna be one of the things that I asked you is for somebody getting started with tarot, like, what would you recommend? So would it be. Recommend pulling two cards and kind of start. Ask questions about them?

Mariana Louis [00:12:05]:

Yeah. The spread I like to use is the conscious unconscious spread, I call it. Sometimes basically just the first card is like an expression of where I am right now, how I see myself right now, or what's going on for me. And then the second card is what maybe I don't see, or what's under the surface, what's a little bit shadowy here and just sitting with that and what kind of comes up in the exchange between those two. I think that's really important to not overdo it in the beginning. Don't do 12 cards card spreads every other day, just two cards. In fact, I usually say two cards once a week is. Is best just to keep it as simple as possible.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:43]:

Yeah, that's great. I know whenever we're learning something new, I know for me, it's like, oh, I want to do it all.

Mariana Louis [00:12:48]:

Of course. Yeah, I did the same. Yep.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:51]:

And what is one of the biggest mistakes you see people make when they're working with tarot as either new or even more seasoned?

Mariana Louis [00:12:59]:

I think, first of all, believing that there is a right or wrong way to read the cards, even if you are reading in a very predictive standard way, there is no such thing as one set meaning for any of the cards. You can go online and find all sorts of keywords. And there's something that I really like. A way of framing the tarot is through the words of Marie Louise Lanfrans, who's a Jungian. She talks about divination, and she says there's really two kinds of divination. There's binary divination and chaos. Divination, Binary Divination means that you can flip a coin. Tails is yes, heads is no, whatever.

Mariana Louis [00:13:34]:

Right? And that's binary. There is a clear answer. Pretty much everything else is chaos. Divination, meaning that we're looking at symbols and interpreting them. And so if there is an act of interpretation involved in the divination, there is no one answer to anything. So I think that in the beginning you get, you pull a card and you're like, what does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? And we freak out. Does it mean something good or bad? And then we're like pulling at 25 guidebooks and trying to get the answer that we most want. And the, the point is just to sit with what it brings up in you and to.

Mariana Louis [00:14:06]:

Yes, keywords are really useful sometimes for triggering those processes. But I, very often in the beginning, I think your own associations are going to be a stronger way to read the card than like anything a guidebook is going to tell you. So that's one of the biggest mistakes I see people do in the beginning is, you know, I get this all the time where I'm teaching a class, and then I'll talk about how to interpret it for yourself and check in with what's coming up and the associations that you're making. And someone will just send me a picture of their cards and be like, yeah, but what does this mean? Like, no, no, no, that's the point. That's the point right there. I can't tell you. I don't, I don't know. When I'm reading for clients, I sit with them for a long time beforehand, listen to what's going on, and then more equal part of the reading is me telling them what I know about the card and how I interpret the card and asking them questions about what they're.

Mariana Louis [00:14:58]:

How they're interpreting this card based off of what I've offered. And that's how we get to the beauty of, of the thing. So it's all process. So there no wrong way to read it and you didn't mess it up. And there's so much, so much room for interpretive, Interpretive adaptability. Yeah, I like to say, yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:17]:

What I love that is really that it does bring you back to, like, what are the questions that you need to ask? And also imagination as well, too. Like, I know when I'm doing some workshops with students and, you know, we might be talking about something, and then I'll pull a goddess card and in my mind I'll be like, oh, I hope we get Aphrodite. She would be perfect. I hope we get Saraswati. You know, I always tend to be more of the love creative Godd. But then we'll get, like, Kali or hell, and I'll be like, ooh. But then as you dig in, it gives you a whole new way of looking at things, like, well, what does this goddess want to tell us in this situation? Like, I'm thinking, I want Aphrodite because it would be perfect for the conversation. And I get something completely the opposite.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:57]:

And then as we dive in, it's always like, yeah, that's actually the one that we needed.

Mariana Louis [00:16:02]:

Yeah. This is a big. Another big issue, I think, for beginner readers is that they're looking for ego bias confirmation, right? So they're. They're. You know, maybe they come to the cards asking question, like, oh, I had this breakup, you know, we're gonna get back together, aren't we? And they're looking for the cards that say, yeah, it's gonna be fine. And then they get the things that challenge that or don't support that or are just very, like, ambiguous and not really giving a yes or no in any way. And they kind of have this panic because they. They were looking for something in their ego to be confirmed.

Mariana Louis [00:16:32]:

Right. The ego wants to hear the thing that's gonna comfort it. And the tarot has no interest in comforting our egos. No interest in that at all. I think most people, like most terrorists who work with the cards for a while, will have one deck who's soft and gentle with them and a little bit comforting, and then a deck who's like, I will tell you what's happening. I will not lie. I will not sugarcoat it. So it's really important to understand that the tarot is not there to confirm what your ego wants to hear.

Mariana Louis [00:16:59]:

It's there to give you a pathway into a deeper conversation with the unconscious, which is often gonna go a very opposite way from what the ego expects.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:17:08]:

Yeah, it's so interesting. You just made me think. I just did a podcast with Lisa Marciano, and we were talking about dreams, and she's also said, dreams are not interested in what the ego, you know, wants or believes. And it seems that tarot is very much the same way. So in some ways, would you say, like, tarot is a form of shadow work?

Mariana Louis [00:17:26]:

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely say that. I think it's very close to dreaming in that it is. Gives us this array of symbols that we didn't expect, we didn't plan. They just showed Up. And so now the difference between that and dream is that, you know, with the dream, we're going to sit and we're going to interpret it and kind of bring it into a personal space. Whereas with Tarot, we're going to kind of look at it a little bit more formulaically of like, how is this telling a story? But it is very much engaging with the shadow. And I believe that even those cards that feel most confusing for us, those are the ones that have the most fruitful opportunity for us. I think a lot of people get stuck.

Mariana Louis [00:18:07]:

They're like, this is so, so confusing. I'm like, good, be confused. I actually got into someone on Instagram at some point, kind of like yelled at me because I posted like a reel that said, your confusion is the best actual way pathway to your clarity. Like, we want the clarity, but the confusion is the thing we have to go through first. And this person commented, like, that makes no sense. Tarot's about giving us the, like, clarity. We don't want to be confused. And I was like, I couldn't disagree more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:18:32]:

We.

Mariana Louis [00:18:33]:

We're going to be confused. Of course, the cards, sometimes they come through and we're like, I know exactly what that's saying. And that can be great. But it's more useful to me when we have a card. It's like, huh, what's that about? And now I have to go on this journey of contemplating this thing and exploring it, and then the most extraordinary things come through eventually. And that's another thing I like to tell beginners, is that you cannot use Tarot. It's not a pill. It's not something that you just take it and then it works.

Mariana Louis [00:19:04]:

It is like a dream where you are going to sit with it for days, potentially sometimes weeks and months. There'll be that big reading that you're still contemplating half a year later. It can take time to fully embrace all of the aspects that come up. But to slow it down, always just to not expect it to just pull a card and be like, oh, boom, got it. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes we'll pull a card and be like, totally. I need to, like, take a break today. I see that, you know, but a lot of times I.

Mariana Louis [00:19:30]:

It's. It's about really exploring what it is triggering in you, what it is it is trying to guide you to.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:36]:

I think that's such an important point that you made too, that it's not a quick fix or a pill. Because I think in our culture, we expect that we're going to get these answers Right away. Like, if I just do A and B, then I will get C or then I will know what to do. And it just doesn't work that way. Like, we do have to spend time in the chaos and spend time thinking about it. Do you find that's hard for, for your clients and students? I just feel like we've just been program in our culture. Like we want immediate gratification.

Mariana Louis [00:20:05]:

Yeah, it's hard for me. I, I pull the cards and I'm. I still sit there and go, what in the world am I supposed to do with this? This is not what I wanted. But it's important. It's important to, to bring ourselves down into this place of humil. Humility where we don't know, we don't know, and, you know, we don't know what's going to happen in life or even sometimes what is happening in life and we're in the middle of it and the tarot is, is like life. We're gonna see cards that we just don't know what to do with. And it makes us very, very upset, very aggravated, because it feels like that's the whole point of using it.

Mariana Louis [00:20:38]:

Like, why would I use it if it's not gonna get me out of this discomfort? But I think that this is an opportunity. This is a tool that we have to deepen our relationship with ourselves. But it's not gonna get us out of the discomfort. It's. It's going to sometimes add to the discomfort. And when I, when I have, you know, students who are like, getting to that burnout point where they're like, it's, it's too confusing. It's not like giving me the answers I want. I tell them, just, just take a break.

Mariana Louis [00:21:06]:

Just take the option of answers off the table. Like, just don't eat. Just live. Have three months where you forget about this thing and then return to it and, and see if it can be used again. It doesn't have to be a tool that you use religiously. It can be something that you use when you need it. When it feels like now is a moment where I'm. I'm receptive.

Mariana Louis [00:21:27]:

This is another thing I always tell people is to avoid going to the cards in a storm. When we are in the place of highest emotional vulnerability. We want consolation, we want comfort. And the tarot might give us that and it really might not. And if that's going to make us more heartbroken, it's not the time to do it. It's a point where we should just, just sit with Whatever emotion we have. And when we have that, I like to say it's like when we feel like that door has cracked open a little bit where we feel like we could. We could listen to whatever it is that comes good or bad, a little bit of room for that, then we can go.

Mariana Louis [00:22:07]:

But in. When we're. When we just got the breakup text, don't go to your cards, please. It's. It could be very dangerous. I have done that myself so many times, and I keep having to remind myself of that lesson over and over again. It's like, I got the bad news. Give me the card that tells me that this is just part of the journey.

Mariana Louis [00:22:23]:

And it's like some very alarming thing that's, you know, the tower. And I'm like, oh, no, that's not what I wanted. I'm not ready for the tower. It's important to. To be a little bit more grounded when we're engaging with it.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:22:36]:

That's wonderful wisdom, because I can totally see people, like, when something happens and they're feeling activated or triggered and wanting to run, and then we're just not in a space or a system where we can even respond or even probably process or interpret what the cons might be saying.

Mariana Louis [00:22:53]:

Yeah. I've been thinking about this in particular a lot with. Especially with what we call the bad cards or think of as bad cards, because there's this kind of, like, impulse, I think, to erase the negativity from the tarot and say, there's no bad cards. Like, everything is about our growth. And, yes, I believe that that's true at everything we go through. But of course there's bad cards, because not all of human experience is beauty and joy. Like, they're suffering too. And so we're going to have cards that represent that suffering.

Mariana Louis [00:23:21]:

And so I think that. That when we see a bad card, one of the reasons we go to the tarot very often is to get. I call it like, the golden hall pass. It's like, you're gonna get out of all suffering. And here the tarot is gonna show you that you're exempt. Like, you. You're gonna have a fine time. And then we don't get that, and then we spiral, and we panic, and we're like, why did I do this thing? It can be a bit of an overwhelming tool, especially in those really sensitive moments when we know that getting a bad card or seeing something that.

Mariana Louis [00:23:51]:

That says suffering is here and suffering may continue, that can be really destabilizing. So it's not the Time. Right. Then it's not the time to engage with it, but it's also shows us how to grow our courage and our sense of, you know, willingness to participate in life when we can see the bad cards, you know, see those points of suffering and say, okay, show me. Tell me how I can move with this and experience this and mine as much meaning and beauty from this as possible while not resisting what's happening in my life.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:24:26]:

I really appreciate how the tarot does have some of those suffering cards. And it's not all joy in life just because life, as you said, just isn't. And I think it's important that, you know, as seekers or anyone on this journey, that we remember that no matter what we do, no matter how much we meditate or what time we go to bed or the cards that we pull, there, it's going to be ups and downs.

Mariana Louis [00:24:48]:

Yes. Yeah. There's a card in the tarot that tells us this. It's the Wheel of Fortune card, and it is always spinning. And so the idea is that it is fickle, it's random. This is the classic, classic thing from, like, you know, ancient times is like, but I'm a good person. I've done good. How could this bad thing happen to me? We've all thought that thing.

Mariana Louis [00:25:07]:

And we're not the first. We're one of billions of people on the planet who have had that exact thought. And the wheel of Fortune tells us it spins. It spins. And you have to absolutely accept that you're gonna be at the bottom and absolutely remember that you are going to rise back to the top, and then you're gonna be at the bottom again, and then you're gonna rise to the top. And life is cyclical. And one of the things I really love about that card that I talk about often is that the whole point is to transpose the center of our experience from the circumference to the center point, the hub of the wheel. Right.

Mariana Louis [00:25:40]:

So things in life are going to happen. It's always going to affect us. But can we live at that center point where we are closest to our sense of self, our sense of meaning, our sense of just presence in life? That's the big goal. Getting there is really hard, but that's the big point. And so the tarot helps us remember that, too.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:26:00]:

Earlier on, when we started, you mentioned individuation. So I know that's a Jungian term, the process of becoming whole. How does the tarot help us with that?

Mariana Louis [00:26:10]:

Yeah. So one of the kind of unique things That I talk about in my approach to the Tarot is that the 22 major Arcana cards actually show us what this process of individuation looks like. And so we have the first six cards are the Magician through the Chariot, or, sorry, the Magician through the Lovers. And so these show us, like, the binaries of the dichotomies of life between masculine, feminine, mother and father, Logos and Eros, right? These kinds of things that were always in between. And then when we start with the Chariot card, we really. This is like this guy, he's on a chariot. He's, like, moving forward. This is the development of the ego.

Mariana Louis [00:26:46]:

And so then we have some cards, five cards after that, that show this development of the ego from Chariot through justice. Justice shows we have it. We can sit in this place of power and authority over our lives. We trust our ability to discern what's right and wrong. We act with dignity. And then immediately afterwards, we have the Hanged Man. He's flipped. And so this is the descent into Shad, which we go through constantly of then breaking down the ego.

Mariana Louis [00:27:15]:

We don't really know who we are anymore. We go through death, we meet the devil. We meet, you know, the shadow experience. The tower breaks down all these things that we thought were impenetrable and gonna. You know, this is who I was, and it's never gonna change, right? And then after that, we move on to the Star through the world card. And these are the archetypes of transcendence. And this is kind of the path that the tarot shows us that individuation takes of bolstering the ego grow who we are, who we identify as, and the shadow, breaking it down and revealing deeper truths, and then having that transcendent experience that integrates these things into some kind of whole experience. And then the fool is that individuated self who lives exactly as he is without, you know, any fear, any hesitation, total wholeness with him, with his own being.

Mariana Louis [00:28:06]:

And so we're in this cycle all the time, constantly moving through it and returning backward and. And been propelling forward. And it's just this really beautifully laid out story of what that process looks like. And it's important, though you remember, it's not linear. It doesn't go exactly like that in real time. But that's what the story looks like in its general arc, which is just so cool. The way that tarot does that, it just amazes me.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:28:30]:

That really is amazing. I actually had no idea that it provided such a roadmap of individuation. And again, as I say roadmap, as Mariana just said, it's cyclical, it's not linear. You don't wake up one day just here I am.

Mariana Louis [00:28:42]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:28:44]:

But I also love how the fool is a representation of individuation. And it makes perfect sense, right, because it's more of just spontaneous. And I am not here to do this or to do that. But that's so interesting to me.

Mariana Louis [00:28:55]:

Yeah. I like to think of the world and the fool as the two expressions of individuation. The world is the last card in the major arcana sequence. And it's the world. It's like all. Everything in reality is here. Like, it's wholeness, right? Everything is whole. And Jung, when he talked about individuation, talked about it in two ways.

Mariana Louis [00:29:15]:

One was a very mystical way of this idea of wholeness and being one with the universe and one with self and. And this big, you know, cosmic thing. And then he talked about, in a very practical way, which is that we live per our own inner experience. Right? We don't worry too much about what society tells us we're supposed to do or what our parents tell us we're supposed to do. We say, I am in communion with. With myself, and so I live per my own path, and that's it. And so I really see those two cards as showing these two different expressions of the individuated self. The world saying, like, we're part of the whole cosmic universe.

Mariana Louis [00:29:53]:

And then the fool saying, and now we go live exactly as we are in this one mortal life that we have. Go enjoy it. Go. Go find something about yourself. Step off the cliff if you have to. You know, it's your cliff. You get to do whatever you want. And so that's always the goal, is trying to live as much as.

Mariana Louis [00:30:09]:

As the fool as possible. And I like to always put the fool at the end of. Whenever I'm talking about the tarot, whenever I'm laying out this story, because a lot of people put him at the. At the beginning. His number is zero. All the. All the major arcana are numbered. So we have this order.

Mariana Louis [00:30:22]:

He's zero. So we tend to put him right at the beginning. But I really think we only understand him once we've gone through everything. Once we've gone through it all, then we get what he's about. I like to throw him at the end to say, nope, we started, we're at the end. So now we just began.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:30:36]:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, I know many of my listeners Are young lovers as you are. I've watched lots of your YouTubes too, and I really love the way that you have such a beautiful way of breaking down like very like esoteric terms and the way that you teach about young. How would you say the tarot relates to some of his teachings, like the anima, the animus, the self. And we've covered a few of it. But how do you see that working together?

Mariana Louis [00:31:00]:

Yeah, it overlaps really well. I think that in general with all of these things, a lot of times we like these exactly like overlaps of like these one to ones. Like it's perfectly, you know, and it doesn't work like that obviously, but the self, you know, that capital S self, that experience of like the numinous center of our being is present all over the tarot. We see it in the Hanged man card, it peeks through and the temperance card. And in terms of the ideas of the anima and animus, I see that very much in the first six cards of the tarot. The anim and animus are a little bit, you know, debated ideas at this point, since Jung really came up with them and worked on them, you know, pre, like second wave feminism. So. So there's a lot of.

Mariana Louis [00:31:49]:

A lot of gendered ideology applied to these ideas that I think we've moved beyond. But the core idea of like the, the masculine versus feminine and these integral. That dichotomy that we all like know and live with, I think that that's very present in the tarot. So I see that in the. The magician and the high priestess being this kind of cosmic expression of like world soul and world spirit. And then we have the empress and emperor, which are like the divine mother and father. And then we have the lovers and the hierophant, which a lot of people don't see as a parent couple, but to me it's so obvious that they are, because we see their imagery as almost like a mirror image of each other in that we have this one, you know, the hierophant sits in a throne and he has two priests like at his feet, learning from him. And then with the lovers card, we have the angel of love above them.

Mariana Louis [00:32:44]:

And then we have them both like, receiving the love. So there's this thing about teaching and receiving knowledge or some kind of wisdom. With the hierophant, it's the wisdom, the knowledge of logos learning, teaching, spiritual doctrine, these sorts of things. And with the lovers, it's love, it's experience, it's being bound to another person. And so they're both about, you know, learning how to grow through that logos, that mind, rational experience, or eros, that love, embodied experience. So I see it, I see that come up. That's a very Jungian way of thinking about those ideas in the first six cards and then it just pops in everywhere. All sorts of Jungian ideas like the transcendent function is very obvious in the last six cards of the tarot.

Mariana Louis [00:33:32]:

And then I like to think about the Jung's idea of enantiodromia when talking about reversals, which is this idea that when the psyche is too one sided, it automatically tries to overcompensate by going to its opposite. I see that all the time. Come up with reversals and when the cards come up upside down. So there's a lot of ways that Jungian psychology kind of overlaps and I teach that a lot in my courses. So it's very cool, I think when you start to, to apply these things.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:34:01]:

Yeah, it sounds, it, it really sounds fascinating and it sounds like a great way to start applying some of the Jungian concepts and having something kind of like tangible to be working with as well too.

Mariana Louis [00:34:11]:

Yeah, yeah, great.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:34:13]:

So tell me, I know you have some things coming up. Like you have a book in March. Can you tell me a little bit about that book?

Mariana Louis [00:34:19]:

Yeah, it's coming out as you said. March. March 2, I believe is the release date. It's called Tarot and the Psychology of the Exploring the Archetypal Mirrors of the Psyche. So it is a book about Tarot, obviously, and also Jungian psychology, depth psychology, how to apply those principles to how we read the cards. And I really didn't want this to just be a typical guidebook where you get like, oh, here's what all the cards mean. And you know, you can, it's a reference guide. So there is that where you can, you know, look up all the different card meanings and how I apply Jungian lenses to it.

Mariana Louis [00:34:57]:

But also there's a lot of material on how to do shadow work, working with court cards as complexes and how to apply techniques like active imagination and dreamwork and all these things with the tarot and bringing in those Jungian frameworks. So that's coming out in March and it's very exciting. I'll be working on it. It, I don't know, like really probably working on it, like five years probably. And you know, I think like, like when did I really start this project? So it's definitely a dream manifesting, which is, is very, very cool.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:29]:

Yeah, it sounds amazing and I know that I know the women in my community are going to absolutely love it. So so much of what you just said is things that we work on like the active imagination and just even the archetypes. So it sounds, sounds fascinating.

Mariana Louis [00:35:42]:

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's available for pre order I think wherever where people pre order their books on. On Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all those places. I think it's, it's already available to.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:51]:

Pre order and I'll put some links to do that in the show notes as well too so people don't have to look too hard for that.

Mariana Louis [00:35:57]:

Great.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:58]:

So thank you so much. But I would love to just. Is there anything else you would like to share with with my listeners and also just where people can find you and work with you?

Mariana Louis [00:36:06]:

Yeah, yeah. So I'm on Instagram at Persephone Sister. That's the place that I'm probably most active. I actually recently just opened a subs back which I'm going to start working on a little bit more. So the plan there is to have more in like deeper essays and on these topics and really guide people in a more hands on way. So that's also my handle there is Persephone's Sister. I'm also on YouTube as you mentioned. Also at Persephone Sister.

Mariana Louis [00:36:31]:

I do have a class coming up with the Jung Arcademy in January which is Tarot and Shadow with a Jungian perspective. So that's gonna be a three week program all about how to use Tarot and shadow work and how these things are relaxed. Is very exciting. I've taught this one before and it's one of my favorite things to teach. If you get on my newsletter I also offer a free archetypal Tarot booklet to get people started on thinking about the cards this way. So that's just a free thing that you can get if you click the links through. You'll see it on my website or on Instagram or anything to get that booklet. I love people kind of reaching out and saying that they found me in these different ways and telling me that they are interested in Tarot.

Mariana Louis [00:37:11]:

So definitely reach out if you pop over and, and and come join me somewhere.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:15]:

Yeah. Well thank you for all of that and again I'll have all of that in the show notes and if you are not already on Mariana's Instagram, please get on that. It's definitely one of my favorite favorite accounts. And you know you offer such great, great information as well too and make spiritual growth and personal development fun. And also it just seems very much like taking back your power and kind of coming back to your own inner wisdom and not what people are telling you you need to heal or fix, but what you, you know to be true.

Mariana Louis [00:37:44]:

Yeah. Yeah. Beautifully said. Yeah. And thanks so much for having me on. This was really fun. I love talking about all this stuff, obviously, so it's been a pleasure.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:52]:

Thank you. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Gotta School podcast. I hope it sparked your imagination and expanded your vision for what's possible. If you're ready to explore these concepts more deeply, reclaim your personal myth and live with greater creativity and enchantment, I invite you to join me inside enlivened my Divine Feminine Mystery School and Sacred community where we bring these teachings to life through ritual, story coaching, and of course, real world action. You can find the link to learn more in the show notes. And remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of yourself.

Mariana Louis [00:38:33]:

She.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:38:34]:

She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the goddess. Until next. Time.