What a Yes Actually Feels Like

The Witchy Cauldron deck includes a yes/no indicator on every card, and The Fool is an unambiguous yes. But I want to talk about what that actually means from the inside of someone who has been using divination as a personal practice for a long time, because the textbook definition of a yes card and the lived experience of receiving a yes are two very different things.

A yes with absolute certainty does not leave room for procrastination or sitting around waiting for conditions to improve or circumstances to align. It is permission. It is a green light. It is the card speaking back to you in the intrinsic language we discussed in the first post in this series — the same language as the stop sign, the same frequency as green means go, arriving in your body before your mind has had a chance to complicate it with questions and conditions and reasons why not. When a real yes comes through there is a quality to it that is unmistakable once you have felt it enough times to recognize it. It does not invite debate. It invites action.

That is what The Fool’s yes feels like at its most upright and most clear. Not a prediction about what will happen if you move forward. Not a guarantee that the outcome will be what you are hoping for. A permission slip. An endorsement of the moving itself, regardless of what the moving leads to. The universe saying not here is your destination but here is your direction, and trusting you to handle everything that comes between the step and the arrival.

I have come to understand that the cards do not tell me what I do not already know. They confirm what I have been avoiding knowing. The yes from the deck is almost never a surprise. It is a mirror held up to the thing I have already felt but have been too cautious or too polite or too careful about other people’s opinions to simply do.

The Upright Meaning

When The Fool appears upright the core message is begin. The canvas is completely clean and there are no preexisting blocks or accumulated baggage standing in the way. New beginnings, a leap of faith, trust in something you cannot fully see yet. The keywords from the Witchy Cauldron deck are innocence, spontaneity, potential, adventure — and I want to sit with that word innocence for a moment because I think it is the most important and the most misunderstood of the four.

The innocence of The Fool is not naivety. It is not the innocence of someone who has never been hurt or disappointed or made a mistake that cost them something real. It is the innocence of someone who has arrived at a particular kind of freedom on the other side of all of that — the freedom of the figure on my Witchy Cauldron card who moves toward the water without caring where his feet land, his pole slung over his shoulder with the easy unhurried carry of someone who reminds me of a fisherman heading toward the water with no particular agenda, not because he is unaware that the water is there but because he has stopped letting the awareness of it change his stride. That is a hard-won innocence. The kind that looks like naivety from the outside and feels like liberation from the inside.

The Reversed Meaning

I want to be honest about the reversed Fool in a way that goes beyond the standard interpretation, because I have lived this card in both its directions and the reversed version has a specific texture in my experience that the textbooks do not quite capture.

I am rarely practical about a no or a not yet. When something in me wants to move and the answer coming back is wait, my first response is to rationalize and argue and ask but why. I want to negotiate with the timing. I want to find the angle where the not yet becomes a yes if I just reframe it correctly or try harder or approach it differently. There is a part of me that genuinely believes I can change my stars by doing something, by moving toward what I want rather than sitting still and trusting it to arrive, and that part of me finds the reversed Fool almost intolerable. Because what the reversed Fool sometimes asks for is exactly the thing I am worst at — sitting on my hands so I do not fidget, being patient in the specific way that feels like nothing is happening even when everything is.

The traditional interpretation splits the reversed Fool into two warnings — recklessness on one side and paralysis on the other. Both are real and both are worth knowing. But what I have found in my own practice is that there is a third expression of this reversed energy that does not fit neatly into either category. It is the experience of someone who is wired for action being asked by the universe to be still and trust the process anyway, who knows the answer is coming and cannot stop poking at the circumstances to try to make it arrive faster. That is not recklessness and it is not paralysis. It is the specific agony of faith being asked to express itself as patience rather than as motion, which for some of us is the hardest thing the cards ever ask.

The reversed Fool does not always mean stop entirely. Sometimes it means the yes is real but the timing is not yours to control. Learning the difference between those two things — between a genuine not yet and an old habit of hesitation — is some of the most important work the cards have ever asked me to do.

The Fool’s Place in the Larger Story

The 22 Major Arcana cards tell a complete story and The Fool is the main character of all of it. Every card that follows represents a lesson, a teacher, an obstacle, or a gift that the soul encounters as it grows from pure potential into integrated wisdom. This narrative is known as The Fool’s Journey and understanding it changes the way you read every card in the Major Arcana, because you stop seeing isolated symbols and start seeing chapters in a single continuous story.

Every great tradition has its own version of this story. The hero’s journey. The vision quest. The descent and the return. The soul that leaves the known world, passes through transformation, and comes home carrying something it could not have found without the journey. The Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana is tarot’s version of that universal map, and like every version of that map it begins not with competence or readiness but with innocence and the willingness to step into the unknown without a guarantee of what waits on the other side.

Card 0 is where the Fool begins — innocent, unformed, carrying everything he needs without knowing what any of it is. Nothing comes before The Fool. There is no card zero minus one. The Fool begins in the void, in pure potential, before the story has taken any shape at all. In some readings The Fool is placed at both the beginning and the end of the Major Arcana, suggesting that after the entire journey is complete and every lesson has been learned and integrated, the soul returns not to the ignorance it started with but to a different kind of innocence entirely. Earned innocence. The kind that has seen everything and chosen to begin again anyway.

The elders I sat with in ceremony understood this. The one who has truly walked the path does not arrive at wisdom wearing it like armor or carrying it like a credential. They arrive lighter. More open. More like the Fool at the beginning of the journey than the sage who has read all the books. That is not a contradiction. That is the whole point.

Before We Go to the Final Post

In the next and final post of this series we are going to go beneath all of the symbolism and history and astrology and look at the framework that holds all of it together — the Jungian layer, the chakra system, the quantum and energetic questions, the personal development application, and the question that has been living in me since the first card was pulled. That post is where this series finds its deepest ground and its most open ending.

But before we get there I want to leave you with two questions that belong specifically to this post — to the yes and the no and the experience of receiving an answer and deciding what to do with it. I am not going to answer them. I am genuinely curious what they surface for you, and I read every comment.

For the comments — I want to hear from you

Is there a difference between a yes that requires action and a yes that requires patience? How do you tell them apart from the inside — not from the outside logic of circumstances and timing, but from the felt sense of knowing that lives underneath all of that?

And underneath everything — what does it mean to trust yourself? Not as a concept. Not as something you believe you should be able to do. As a lived experience, in the specific moments when it is hardest and most necessary.

I am learning alongside you. I do not have clean answers to either of these. Leave your thoughts below — this is the conversation I am most interested in having.

The stillness is where the rebellion lives. The depth is the defiance. One cannot know light without first knowing the dark.

History Changes Everything

Understanding where the cards came from completely changes how you read them. The story of The Fool is not just the story of one card. It is the story of how human beings have understood the experience of stepping outside the safety of what is known — and how that understanding evolved over five hundred years.

But the European tarot lineage is only one thread. While the deck was changing hands from Italian nobles to French entertainers to English occultists, the same archetype was alive and recognized in traditions on the other side of the world — in ways that had nothing to do with playing cards and everything to do with the same ancient human truth.

The visual evolution of this card reveals three chapters in the deck’s history. Then we will step outside the deck entirely.

Chapter One: The Madman

(1450s — Visconti-Sforza Deck)

In the oldest surviving tarot cards, created for Italian nobility in the fifteenth century, this card was not called The Fool at all. It was called Il Matto — The Madman.

He was depicted as a ragged, barefoot beggar with feathers stuffed into his unkempt hair and a visible swelling in his neck. He carried a heavy defensive club. There was nothing playful or mystical about him. He had fallen entirely outside the safety of society.

This version represents the fear of loss and societal rejection at its most raw. He is not skipping joyfully. He is surviving. The teaching here is not about adventure — it is about what happens when a person has nothing left to lose and must rely purely on instinct and the mercy of the world.

The baggage changed across five hundred years. The fifteenth century beggar carried a weapon to fight the world. The seventeenth century jester carried a spoon to beg for porridge. The twentieth century mystic carries a small, lightweight sack holding the literal elements of creation, effortlessly slung over one shoulder.

Chapter Two: The Jester (1600s — Tarot of Marseilles)

As tarot spread into France, the character evolved into a classic Renaissance court jester or traveling entertainer.

He wears a bright patterned tunic and a jester’s cap with bells. In this version a dog is actively biting his thigh and pulling down his clothing, exposing him to public mockery.

This chapter introduces the fear of ridicule. The Jester’s role in a royal court was to speak dangerous truths wrapped in jokes. When you choose to walk a unique path, this card tells you, society will try to tear you down or make you a laughing stock.

The Fool’s power is that he keeps walking anyway, completely detached from the need for public approval.

At 54, launching a public learn-with-me tarot channel while carrying ceremonial knowledge that most people in my world never knew I had, I know exactly what the dog feels like. The Jester kept walking. So will I.

Chapter Three: The Mystic

(1909 — Rider-Waite-Smith Deck)

This is the modern version on your Witchy Cauldron deck, reimagined by Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith. They stripped away the degradation of the beggar and the mockery of the jester entirely.

They transformed him into an elegant, young prince of the spirit, stepping off a sun-drenched cliff with a loyal animal companion. He is no longer running from society. He is consciously stepping out of the material world to begin a quest for enlightenment.

This final evolution introduces radical spiritual faith. The Fool is no longer defined by what he has lost or what people think of him. He is defined purely by where he is going.

A Fourth Thread: The Archetype Beyond the Deck

Here is where this gets interesting in a way I did not expect when I started researching this card.

The image of The Fool — the feather in the cap, the figure who does not conform, who wanders outside the boundaries of convention, who is mocked by the establishment and keeps moving anyway — reminded me of something completely outside the tarot tradition.

Yankee Doodle.

The Song That Became an Anthem

Yankee Doodle was originally a British song written to mock American colonists. A man sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni — meaning he thinks himself fashionable when the British considered him a crude, unsophisticated fool. The song was The Jester chapter playing out in real history. The establishment pointing and laughing at the one who does not know his place.

And then the Americans took the song and sang it themselves. Loudly. Proudly. They marched to it. They made it their own. The mockery became the anthem. The insult became the identity. The dog biting at their heels only made them march faster.

That is The Fool. Exactly The Fool. The moment the ridicule stops having power is the moment the journey truly begins.

The Heyoka — The Sacred Fool of the Lakota Tradition

And then there is this.

In Lakota tradition, the Heyoka is a sacred person touched by the thunder beings — Wakinyan — in a dream or vision. The Heyoka walks an inverted path. They do things backwards and contrary to convention. They ride their horse facing the wrong direction. They say the opposite of what they mean. They cry at joyful occasions and laugh at sorrowful ones.

This is not madness. This is a specific and honored spiritual role. The Heyoka’s contrariness is considered sacred because it disrupts habitual perception. It forces people to see things differently. The absurdity cracks open the ordinary and lets something true come through.

That is The Fool.

Not the European version. Not the playing card. The same living archetype, recognized independently by a tradition that had never seen a tarot deck, encoded into a sacred role that predates the Visconti-Sforza deck by centuries.

The Heyoka does not become sacred despite the mockery. The Heyoka becomes sacred through it. The inversion is the teaching. The absurdity is the gift. This is the same truth The Fool has been carrying in every version of the card across five hundred years — the one who does not fit the expected form is often the one carrying the most important message.

I carry a small but significant amount of Lakota lineage. My family went quiet about it across generations. I found my way back to it through ceremony — through sweat lodges on Sunday mornings in Utah, through the directions and the stones and the fathers. And now I am sitting at a desk in Eugene writing about The Fool and finding the Heyoka looking back at me from inside the card.

That is not a coincidence I am willing to dismiss.

Weaving All of It Together

The Madman who had nothing left to lose. The Jester who kept speaking truth through the mockery. The Mystic who chose the spiritual quest over the comfortable known. The colonists who turned ridicule into an anthem. The Heyoka who walks backwards into wisdom.

These are not five different stories. They are the same story told in five different languages across five centuries and two continents.

The Fool archetype is not a European invention. It is a human recognition. Every culture that has ever sent someone on a vision quest, honored a sacred clown, celebrated the one who does not fit, or watched a ragged wanderer speak a truth no one else would say — every one of them was drawing the same card.

The costume just keeps changing. The teaching never does.

Astra Antigua · Ancient starlight · Rachael · Eugene, Oregon

The stillness is where the rebellion lives. The depth is the defiance. One cannot know light without first knowing the dark.

The Card Is a Code

When Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith created the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909 they were not making pretty pictures. They were encoding a complete spiritual and psychological map into every card. Nothing is accidental. Every color, every direction, every object has a deliberate meaning.

One of the things I learned in ceremony is that nothing in a sacred space is arbitrary either. The placement of the stones. The colors assigned to each direction. The order in which things are honored. Symbol systems that carry meaning are ancient. Tarot is one more version of a language human beings have always spoken.

Let us walk through The Fool piece by piece.

Movement and Direction

Facing Toward Us

The Fool faces slightly toward the viewer — toward you, the one holding the card. He is not walking away into a private journey. He is moving toward the edge while maintaining a quiet awareness of your presence. Not performance. More like acknowledgment. This journey inward is not taken entirely alone.

Moving Left

The Fool moves toward the left. In Western esoteric tradition the left represents the subconscious, the inner world, memory, and the depths beneath the surface. This is not a card about leaping outward into external adventure. It is an invitation to turn inward. To face what lives in the deeper self. To step toward the unknown interior rather than the unknown exterior world.

The Cliff’s Edge

One more step and he walks off the edge. He is suspended in the last breath before everything changes — the exact point between the known and the unknown, between who he was and whatever comes next. He has not fallen. He has not stepped back. He is suspended in pure potential.

The Colors

The Bright Yellow Sky

Yellow represents the element of Air, intellect, and divine consciousness. The scene is bathed in the light of the spiritual sun. His journey is divinely protected even when it looks foolish to everyone watching.

The Red Feather

The bright red feather in his cap represents life force, passion, and the fiery spark of desire that drives a soul to experience life. Red is the color of Mars, of action, of the will to begin.

In the Lakota ceremonial tradition I learned through practice, red belongs to the South — the direction of summer, heat, passion, and the fullness of youth. The South is where life burns brightest, where growth happens in real time, where the fire of living is at its most visible and undeniable.

The Fool wears that same energy in his cap. Not the cautious beginning of the East but the full passionate heat of someone who has already decided. The feather does not ask permission. It simply burns.

The Tunic

He wears a long dark green tunic patterned with what appear to be sunflowers — life, warmth, the turning of a face toward light. The sleeves are long and flowing with a dark orange lining — the color of Mars, of fire, of the will that moves beneath the surface of things. Underneath the tunic a white undergarment — the soul beneath the layers, clean and untouched by whatever the outer world has required him to wear. Earthy pants and light boots complete the picture. He is dressed for a journey not a performance. Practical underneath the flourish. Grounded beneath the color.

The outer layers are rich and complex — the full patterned experience of a life lived in the material world. But strip it back and there is always the white underneath. The inner nature that no amount of living ever fully corrupts.

The White Rose

The white rose in his left hand is purity of intention and freedom from lower desires. He is not setting out to conquer or consume. He is setting out to experience. The rose is a symbol of Venus, of beauty, of the heart leading the way.

Venus also rules Taurus. My rising sign. There is something quietly personal about a Taurus rising carrying a white rose into the unknown.

The Bag on the Stick

Look at how he carries it — one arm forward with the pole resting easy over his shoulder, the bag hanging at the end the way a fisherman carries his rod without thinking about the carrying, as though the weight has long since stopped registering as weight. His other arm trails naturally behind him, the white flower tilting gently in the same quiet parallel with the horizon, with the yellow sky above, with the water that waits just beyond the cliff edge where the solid ground simply ends.

There is no drama in his movement and no bracing for what comes next. He moves the way someone moves when they are lost in their own thoughts — or perhaps more accurately, finally found in them. Carefree and almost dancing, with the unhurried rhythm of someone who has released the destination entirely and given themselves over to the walking itself.

The water is right there at the edge of the cliff and he knows it and he does not know it simultaneously, because he has stopped caring where his feet land. That is not recklessness in the way we usually mean the word. It is a particular kind of freedom that most people spend their entire lives reaching toward and never quite touching — the freedom of someone who has already surrendered the outcome and found that the surrender itself was the arrival.

He is not stepping into the water with intention. He is simply walking, and the water is just what happens to be next.

The White Dog

He prances right at The Fool’s left heel, matching his energy stride for stride with the unself-conscious joy that only a dog can carry without apology. There is no warning in this animal, no cautionary bark at the cliff’s edge. He is simply present, simply ready, simply in on whatever comes next with his whole body and without a single reservation.

In traditional tarot interpretation the white dog is often described as a warning — the voice of instinct alerting The Fool to the danger of the cliff ahead, the subconscious mind trying to pull the conscious self back from the edge. It is a valid reading and one worth knowing. But when I look at my Witchy Cauldron card that is not what I see. What I see is a companion who is just as excited about the adventure as The Fool himself. Not a cautionary voice but a co-conspirator. Not a warning but a yes.

White in the medicine wheel tradition speaks to the North — the direction of the great unknown, of wisdom, of the ancestors, of the things that exist beyond what the ordinary eye can see. There is something in that worth sitting with. The white dog who prances at The Fool’s heel may not be an ordinary companion at all. He may be the part of the journey that cannot be planned for or named in advance — the spirit presence that shows up not to guide or warn but simply to run alongside, to match the pace, to be there when the foot finally leaves the ground.

He is not leading. He is not following. He is exactly where he belongs, which is right there, one step behind the heel of someone who has stopped caring where his feet land.

Astra Antigua · Ancient starlight · Rachael · Eugene, Oregon

The stillness is where the rebellion lives. The depth is the defiance. One cannot know light without first knowing the dark.

The Planet of Revolution

In the esoteric tarot system developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, The Fool is universally associated with one planet: Uranus.

Uranus is the planet of sudden awakenings, revolution, and unexpected change. It is the force that shatters the status quo to make room for what comes next. Just as Uranus disrupts and liberates, The Fool’s energy inspires you to throw away rigid plans, embrace the unpredictable, and trust your intuition without overthinking the consequences.

When The Fool appears and Uranus is its ruler, it is not asking you to be reckless. It is asking you to be free.

Uranus takes 84 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. It spends approximately 7 years in each zodiac sign. Where Uranus sits in your birth chart reveals where you are meant to break the rules and reinvent yourself.

The Element: Air

The Fool vibrates at the frequency of Air. In tarot and esoteric tradition, Air governs the mind — thought, communication, ideas, the breath of life itself.

In the medicine wheel tradition I learned through ceremony, the directions each carry elemental correspondences as well. The languages are different but the underlying truth is the same — the elements are not just physical forces. They are intelligences. They teach. The Fool moving through Air is moving through the realm of thought and possibility before it has taken physical form.

Whatever new beginning this card is pointing toward does not start with action. It starts with a shift in thinking. Before you step off the cliff you have to change the story you have been telling yourself about why you cannot.

The Astrological Connections

The Fool represents a universal, pre-zodiac state of being, so its astrological connections are a blend rather than a single fixed sign.

Its most direct link is to Aquarius, the sign ruled by Uranus. Aquarius is the revolutionary, the visionary, the one who sees the future before anyone else and refuses to follow the crowd. Some modern practitioners also connect The Fool to Gemini for its curiosity and adaptability, and to Pisces for its deep transcendent faith and its willingness to wander into the unknown.

Where This Gets Personal

I need to tell you something I did not plan to share in the second post. Something I noticed after I wrote the first one.

I am a Pisces Sun with Mercury also in Pisces. My conscious self and the way I think and communicate all run through the most intuitive, dreaming, boundary-dissolving sign in the zodiac. Neptune rules that territory — the planet of visions, spiritual depth, and the dissolving of what separates what is from what could be.

But my Moon is in Aquarius.

The Moon represents your emotional interior. What you need to feel safe. How you actually process feeling beneath the surface. And Aquarius is ruled by Uranus — the same planet that rules The Fool.

My emotional core and the card that started this entire journey share the same planetary ruler. The deck did not just pick a random card for my first pull. It picked the one that speaks the language of my inner world.

The Fool is ruled by Uranus. My Moon is in Aquarius, also ruled by Uranus. My emotional architecture and this card are written in the same language. I did not plan this it’s simply the order in which these cards tell their story and apparently mine too.

Born Three Minutes From the Edge

Here is the detail that stopped me completely when I looked at my chart carefully.

I was born on March 13, 1972, at 8:59 in the morning in Seattle. At that moment my Moon was at 15 degrees Aquarius. Three minutes later — just three minutes — the Moon would have crossed into Pisces.

I was born on the threshold. Right at the edge of the transition, suspended in the last breath before the sign changed.

If that is not The Fool energy I do not know what is. The card literally depicts a figure at the edge of a cliff, frozen in the moment just before the step. That was my Moon’s position at the moment I arrived in the world. Aquarian. Independent. Visionary. Three minutes from becoming something else entirely.

In ceremony, the threshold is sacred. The moment between the sweat lodge and the outside air. The moment between the stone being placed and the prayer being spoken. I have sat in those thresholds many times. I was apparently born in one.

What the Sky Is Doing Right Now

Right now, at the time of writing this on May 28, 2026, Uranus is sitting at 23 degrees Taurus. My Ascendant — my rising sign, the face I show the world — is at 23 degrees Taurus. Uranus is sitting directly on top of it.

This transit happens once every 84 years. Uranus conjunct the Ascendant means the planet of radical reinvention is rewriting who I appear to be to the outside world. The identity I present, the first impression I make, the life I am living visibly — all of it is being shaken loose and rebuilt.

Astra Antigua is not just a business idea. It is Uranus doing exactly what Uranus does.

Jupiter in Cancer is also trining my Pisces Sun right now. Jupiter expands everything it touches. A trine is pure flow, no friction. The dreaming, intuitive core of who I am is being flooded with expansive, emotionally supportive energy at the exact moment I am launching something deeply personal.

And Saturn moving through my 12th house is the quiet preparation. The inner clearing. The work done in private before anything becomes visible. That was this whole long season of thinking before acting.

The Taurus Rising Foundation

My Ascendant is Taurus. This is what people see when they first meet me — grounded, steady, trustworthy, someone who builds things that last. While the inner world dreams through Pisces and the emotional interior needs freedom through Aquarius, the outward presence is rooted earth energy.

In the medicine wheel, the earth direction carries similar energy — the physical world, foundation, the body, what persists. My rising sign and my ceremonial understanding of the earth direction say the same thing in different languages. Build on solid ground. Let the roots go deep before the branches reach out.

Uranus sitting on that Ascendant right now is not destroying the foundation. It is updating it. The roots stay; whatever grows from them is being reimagined entirely.

If you are curious about your own chart and how it might connect to the cards you pull, I will be weaving astrology into every card in this series. The intersection of where you were born and what the cards say is one of the most personal tools I know.

Astra Antigua · Ancient starlight · Rachael · Eugene, Oregon

The stillness is where the rebellion lives. The depth is the defiance. One cannot know light without first knowing the dark.

My name is Rachael. I am 54 years old. I am my mother’s daughter.

My mother was Native American by appearance — high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, the kind of face that carries its lineage openly whether it wants to or not. I have many of those same features. But my family went quiet about where we came from. The kind of quiet that has its own history behind it, its own reasons, its own cost.

So I went looking.

That quest eventually led me to ceremony. To a sweat lodge in a backyard in Utah on Sunday mornings. To the stones and the directions and the colors and the fathers. To a tradition rooted in Lakota wisdom that recognized something in me I had not yet learned to name. My ex-husband was the unexpected doorway to something I had always belonged to. Whatever else changed between us, that gift remains.

I tell you this not to make this post about my past, but because it explains something about how I approach the spiritual world. I am not someone who found a pretty deck and decided to start a blog. I am someone who has been sitting with ancient things for a long time, in different forms, and is now adding a new language to a conversation that started long before this.

Astra Antigua means ancient starlight. The light from distant stars has been traveling toward us for thousands of years before we ever see it. That felt right for what I am building here. Something that was always moving in my direction. I just had to look up.

The Deck on the Shelf

I have owned a tarot deck for longer than I care to admit. I have shuffled it, admired it, set intentions with it, and put it back on the shelf more times than I can count.

The deck is called the Witchy Cauldron Learning Tarot. Each card carries its meaning right on its face — the upright and reversed interpretations, the astrological correspondence, the element, the chakra, the yes or no. It was designed for someone learning in real time. It was designed, it turns out, for exactly this.

I am not a tarot expert. I am someone with genuine curiosity, a willingness to do the research, and enough life experience to know that the moments I have regretted most were not the leaps. They were the times I stood at the edge and talked myself back inside.

I am learning tarot in public, one card at a time. You are invited to figure it out alongside me.

Card Zero. Not Card One.

I almost started somewhere else. I almost picked a card that felt safer or more familiar. But every time I shuffled the deck and asked where to begin, The Fool kept showing up. So here we are.

Card zero. Not card one. That detail stopped me the first time I noticed it. The Fool does not even get a number in the traditional sense. It sits outside the sequence, before the counting starts. It is the potential before it picks a direction. The beginning before the beginning.

That feels like exactly the right place to start something new.

The Fool is numbered 0, representing the cosmic egg, the void, and a blank slate. It is infinite potential before it takes a single step in any direction. When this card appears it is telling you the canvas is completely clean.

What the Card Shows

The figure on the card is mid-step, about to walk off the edge of a cliff. Not falling — stepping. There is a difference. One is an accident. The other is a choice.

He carries a small bag, everything needed for the journey and nothing more. A white flower in hand. Eyes up, not down at the drop. A small dog at his heels, either warning or cheering depending on how you read it.

I have been that dog lately. Warning myself off the edge of things I actually want.

The Core Meaning

The Fool is the archetype of the soul before experience. Pure potential. The innocent who has not yet learned fear. New beginnings, a leap of faith, radical trust in something you cannot fully see yet.

The Witchy Cauldron deck gives it the keywords: innocence, spontaneity, potential, adventure. Not recklessness. There is a difference between being brave enough to begin and being careless about how you do it.

Reversed it flips — a warning about jumping without looking, or the opposite, hesitating so long at the edge that the moment passes. I have done both in my life. I recognize them both.

Why This Card, Why Now

I am starting something. A brand called Astra Antigua. A tarot series, a metaphysics store, a coaching practice eventually, some books that have been living in my head too long. Big plans from a desk in Eugene with a cat named Dexter who has opinions about everything.

The Fool showed up first because of course it did.

I have been a spiritual practitioner in various forms for most of my adult life. I know what it feels like to sit in ceremony and wait for something to shift. I know what it feels like to honor the directions, to hold the stones, to let the heat do what the heat does. I know the difference between spiritual performance and spiritual practice.

This is practice. This deck, this series, this public learning — all of it is practice. Another form of sitting in the dark and waiting for clarity.

The bag is packed. The flower is in hand. Dexter is right there, probably judging me.

Card zero. Here we go.

I’m learning the Witchy Cauldron Learning Tarot deck publicly, one card at a time. There are many layers to this journey and I intend to unfold them slowly and honestly. If that sounds like your kind of thing, subscribe. Next week we go deeper — the stars behind The Fool, and why this card knows me better than I expected.

Astra Antigua · Ancient starlight · Rachael · Eugene, Oregon

The light was always traveling toward you. You just had to look up.

The Girl Who Knew

I was nine years old the first time I felt the pull.

I do not remember exactly what it was that drew me in. I know it had something to do with witchcraft — not the Halloween costume kind, but the real kind. The kind that felt like it had rules and power and a relationship with the natural world that nobody in my immediate life was talking about. Something in me recognized it before I had any language for what I was recognizing.

I was raised in a Christian household. My grandmother was my primary motherly figure — a devout, deeply sincere woman whom I respected and cherished then and cherish still. She loved me fiercely. She taught me what she knew to be true. And what she knew to be true did not have room for the thing I was drawn to.

So I did what a nine-year-old does when she loves someone and wants to honor them. I shelved the curiosity. I put it somewhere quiet inside myself and left it there.

But it never left.

The things we are drawn to before anyone teaches us to be drawn to them are worth paying attention to. They tend to be the most honest map of who we actually are.

The Door Opens Twice

I turned nineteen and my father gave me three books for my birthday.

They were by a woman named Florence Scovel Shinn. The first was called The Power of the Spoken Word. My father has always been a man on a quest — someone who reads and explores and shares what he finds with the people he loves. He simply wanted to pass along something that had moved him. He had no idea he was reopening a door I had closed ten years earlier.

Florence Scovel Shinn was writing in the 1920s about the creative power of words, belief, and intention. She was describing what we now call manifestation — the idea that what you speak and what you believe shape what becomes real in your life. If that is not magic then I do not know how else to explain it. She just dressed it in the language of her time, which happened to be Christian.

I read the books. I tried the practices. For the most part they worked. But the Christianity woven through them eventually felt like a costume over the real thing — beautiful in its own right but not quite the shape of what I was actually looking for underneath. So I set them down and went looking for the thing without the costume.

Florence Scovel Shinn was publishing her ideas about the power of the spoken word and conscious intention decades before The Secret, decades before Tony Robbins, decades before the Law of Attraction became a cultural phenomenon. She was one of the original voices in a conversation that has been running for a century and shows no sign of stopping.

Building the Framework

What followed was not a straight line. It was more like a river finding its way — moving around obstacles, splitting into channels, rejoining itself further downstream.

Astrology

Astrology arrived almost simultaneously with tarot as an interest, though the deck did not come until much later. I still have several astrology books on my shelf. What drew me to it was not the newspaper horoscope version but the deeper system — the idea that the positions of planets at the moment of birth create a kind of energetic signature, a blueprint that interacts with the unfolding of a life in ways that are too consistent to dismiss.

Modern physics has begun to offer a framework for understanding why this might be literally true rather than metaphorically true. The concept of quantum entanglement — the phenomenon where particles that have interacted remain connected regardless of the distance between them, such that what happens to one is instantly reflected in the other — suggests that the relationship between a living system and the cosmic environment at the moment of its formation might be more than symbolic. The planets that were in specific positions when you took your first breath may have left a quantum signature in the very structure of your biology that persists and resonates throughout your life.

This is not mainstream science yet. But it is not as far from the frontier as most people assume. And it is the most honest explanation I have found for why astrology keeps working in my own experience with a consistency that goes well beyond coincidence.

Carl Jung and the Architecture of the Unconscious

Carl Jung was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century and one of the least understood in popular culture. Most people know him as Freud’s student who broke away and started talking about introverts and extroverts. That is the smallest possible version of what he actually did.

Jung spent his life mapping the unconscious mind — not the personal unconscious of individual repressed memories, but what he called the collective unconscious. The layer of the psyche that is shared across all of humanity. The deep substrate of patterns, images, and energies that appear independently in the myths, dreams, and symbol systems of cultures that never had contact with each other.

He called these patterns archetypes. Universal templates of human experience that exist in every psyche regardless of culture, language, or era. The Hero. The Shadow. The Wise Old Man. The Great Mother. The Trickster.

The Fool.

Jung did not study tarot specifically but he studied alchemy, the I Ching, astrology, and mythological symbol systems extensively. His conclusion was that these ancient tools worked precisely because they gave language and image to the contents of the collective unconscious that the rational mind cannot access directly. They create a conversation between the conscious self and the deeper patterns that are shaping the life from underneath.

When I lay out a tarot card I am not reading the future. I am having a conversation with the part of myself that already knows what the rational mind is too busy or too frightened to look at directly. That is pure Jung. It just happens to come with beautiful pictures.

The Chakra System and the Body as Map

The chakra system is one of the oldest models of human energy anatomy in the world, originating in Hindu and yogic traditions thousands of years old. The seven primary chakras are understood as centers of energy within the body — not metaphorical centers but actual locations where consciousness and physical matter meet and interact.

What is striking about the chakra system when you set it alongside Jung’s archetypal psychology and alongside the tarot is how precisely they map onto each other. The root chakra and the earthy, material suits of the tarot. The heart chakra and the cups, the realm of emotion and relationship. The crown chakra and the Major Arcana cards that operate at the level of universal consciousness.

The Witchy Cauldron Learning Tarot that I am using for this series includes a chakra correspondence on every card. This is not decoration. It is the deck acknowledging what ancient traditions have always known — that the symbolic and the energetic are the same conversation happening at different frequencies.

Personal Development and the Spoken Word

Over the years I found my way to the broader personal development conversation. Tony Robbins. Mel Robbins. The Secret. The Law of Attraction in its many forms and presentations.

What I noticed is that the most effective personal development tools all point toward the same thing from different angles. The power of belief. The creative force of intention. The way the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what is possible become the architecture of the life we actually live. Florence Scovel Shinn was saying this in 1925. Jung was saying it from the direction of depth psychology. The quantum physicists are beginning to say it from the direction of wave function collapse and the observer effect.

Different instruments. Same frequency.

The Sweat Lodge

I am my mother’s daughter. She was Native American by appearance — high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, the kind of face that carries its lineage whether it wants to or not. I have many of those same features. My father believed there was Native blood on his side of the family too, though his people were blond-haired and blue-eyed and the lineage was never spoken about directly.

My family went quiet about where we came from. The kind of quiet that has its own history, its own cost, its own reasons that I have come to understand better as I have gotten older. Assimilation. Survival. The deliberate erasure of identity across generations that so many Native families lived through.

So I went looking.

That quest eventually brought me to ceremony. To a sweat lodge in a backyard in Utah. Sunday mornings with my then-husband, who was the unexpected doorway to a tradition I had always belonged to without having the name for it. The Lakota tradition. The inipi. The stones — the grandfathers and grandmothers — heated in the fire and carried into the lodge. The directions honored one by one. The prayers spoken into the steam.

I learned the directions and what they represent. The colors associated with each. The medicines and the teachings that live in each quadrant of the medicine wheel. This is not information I read in a book. This is knowledge that entered my body through practice, through heat, through the specific quality of attention that ceremony demands.

My ex-husband and I no longer share our lives. But the gift of that connection to my heritage is mine permanently. Whatever else changed, that did not.

The medicine wheel and the tarot suits speak the same language. The directions and the elements correspond with a precision that suggests not borrowed wisdom but independent recognition of the same underlying truth. I will be drawing those connections throughout this series.

The Deck That Kept Coming Back

Astrology and tarot found me almost simultaneously as interests, but I did not get my first deck until I was in my forties. The timing was not coincidental. It arrived in the same season as the ceremony, as if the two were part of the same opening.

I have shuffled it, admired it, set intentions with it, and put it back on the shelf more times than I can count. I have watched tarot on YouTube almost religiously whenever I am having trouble with decisions or motivation. There is something about hearing someone else read the cards that cuts through the noise in a way that other tools do not. It bypasses the rational mind — which is exactly what Jung would predict.

But I have never read publicly. Never committed to the practice in a way that made it real outside my own private world.

Until now.

Why Now

I am 54 years old. I am a Pisces Sun with Mercury also in Pisces — a mind and a soul that live in the realm of intuition, symbolism, and the spaces between what can be proven and what can be felt. My Moon is in Aquarius, three minutes from crossing into Pisces when I was born, sitting on the threshold between the visionary and the dreamer. My Taurus rising gives all of that internal fluid motion a grounded, steady outward form.

Right now Uranus is sitting directly on my Taurus Ascendant. The planet of radical reinvention is rewriting who I appear to be to the outside world. This transit happens once every 84 years. I did not choose this timing. It chose me.

I am starting something called Astra Antigua — ancient starlight. A tarot series, a metaphysics store, a coaching practice eventually, some books that have been living in my head for years. And a cat named Dexter who has opinions about everything and has been sitting on my research notes all week.

The thinking is done. The deck is open. Forty-five years after the nine-year-old first felt the pull, she is finally following it all the way.

What you will find in this series is not a beginner stumbling through card meanings. It is someone who has been living at the intersection of Jungian psychology, chakra energy systems, quantum consciousness theory, Lakota ceremonial wisdom, astrology, and personal development for decades — now picking up the tarot as the next language for something she has been speaking her whole life.

A Note on How This Series Works

I am using the Witchy Cauldron Learning Tarot — a deck designed with the meanings printed directly on each card, including upright and reversed interpretations, the astrological correspondence, the element, the chakra, and a yes or no indicator. I chose it specifically because it removes the performance of expertise and lets the learning be genuine.

For each card I will research the symbolism, the history, the astrological and energetic connections, and where it sits in the larger story the Major Arcana tells. I will weave in the Jungian archetypal layer, the medicine wheel parallels where they exist, the quantum and energetic frameworks that give these symbols their deeper coherence, and my own honest personal reflection.

There will be multiple posts per card. Each one builds on the last. Each one unfolds more of the story as we go.

If you have been carrying a curiosity you were told was dangerous, welcome. You are in the right place.

Astra Antigua · Ancient starlight · Rachael · Eugene, Oregon

The light was always traveling toward you. You just had to look up.

The content published on Astra Antigua is for educational, informational, and personal enrichment purposes only. Nothing published here constitutes professional legal, financial, medical, or psychological advice. Always consult a qualified professional for matters requiring expert guidance.

Tarot & Spiritual Content Disclaimer

Tarot readings, astrological interpretations, and all spiritual content published on Astra Antigua are intended for personal reflection, entertainment, and self exploration only. They are not a substitute for professional counseling, medical advice, or psychological treatment. Results and interpretations are subjective and personal. Rachael of Astra Antigua makes no claims of predicting future events.

Personal Development Disclaimer

Content relating to personal development, manifestation, the Law of Attraction, and self improvement is shared from personal experience and research. Individual results vary. Nothing published here guarantees specific outcomes.

Chakra & Energy Healing Disclaimer

Content relating to chakra systems, energy healing, and related practices is shared for informational and personal exploration purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any physical or mental health condition. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider for health concerns.

Ceremonial & Indigenous Wisdom Disclaimer

References to Lakota ceremonial practices and indigenous wisdom traditions on Astra Antigua are shared from personal lived experience and connection to heritage. They are offered with deep respect and are not intended to appropriate, misrepresent, or speak on behalf of any indigenous community or tradition.

Affiliate Disclosure

Astra Antigua may from time to time include affiliate links to products and services. When purchases are made through these links Astra Antigua may earn a small commission at no additional cost to the buyer. Affiliate relationships will always be disclosed clearly. Astra Antigua only recommends products genuinely used and believed in.

▶ ACTIVATE WHEN READY: Replace the note below with active affiliate disclosure when Amazon Associates or other affiliate programs are joined.

Note: Astra Antigua is not currently participating in any affiliate programs. This disclosure is provided in advance of any future affiliate relationships.

Product & Store Disclaimer

Products featured in the Astra Antigua shop are sourced from third party suppliers. Astra Antigua makes every effort to ensure product quality and accurate descriptions. For questions about orders, shipping, or returns please contact learntarot@astraantigua.com.

▶ ACTIVATE WHEN READY: Remove note below when Shopify store is live.

Note: The Astra Antigua shop is not yet open. This disclaimer will be active upon launch.

The Witchy Cauldron Learning Tarot deck used in this series is not affiliated with or available through Astra Antigua. No compensation is received for its mention. If you wish to purchase this deck a link is provided at the bottom of each card post.

Earnings Disclaimer

Any references to income, revenue, or financial results on Astra Antigua represent personal experience and are not guarantees of similar results for others. Building a business involves risk and individual results vary significantly.

Spiritual Life Coaching Disclaimer

Spiritual life coaching services offered through Astra Antigua are not a substitute for licensed mental health treatment, medical care, or professional counseling. Coaching is a collaborative and forward focused practice. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis please contact a qualified professional or crisis service.

▶ ACTIVATE WHEN READY: Remove note below when coaching services launch.

Note: Coaching services are not yet available through Astra Antigua. This disclaimer will be active upon launch.

Copyright Notice

All original content published on Astra Antigua including written posts, videos, graphics, and brand identity is the intellectual property of Rachael — Astra Antigua. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited. For collaboration or licensing inquiries contact learntarot@astraantigua.com.

Privacy

Astra Antigua collects email addresses for the purpose of delivering newsletter content through Substack. Email addresses are not sold or shared with third parties. You may unsubscribe at any time using the link provided in every email. For questions about your data contact learntarot@astraantigua.com.

Contact

For questions about any of these disclosures or disclaimers:

learntarot@astraantigua.com

Astra Antigua · astraantigua.com