Episode 35: The Symbol of the Garden

The Star: a beloved major arcana card in the tarot, and a beautiful feature of the natural world. Stars glitter in the dark, reminding us of the vastness of the cosmos, and our smallness within it. But the star is never solitary - it is grouped in clusters of its fellow stars, forming constellations that tell cultural stories, encouraging us to find a sense of place within the wild reaches of the macrocosm. Join us in this episode, as we explore stars in myth, fixed stars in astrology and their unique tales, and of course, the messages of hope, replenishment, and healing, that the Star card of the tarot brings to life. Enroll here in Mariana's upcoming Foundations of the Tarot course, beginning June 9th!Just two days left for the 30% off sale Cristina is holding on her pre-recorded classes on astrology and myth! Use the code SPRING30 at checkout. Join us on Sunday May 21st for our next book club meeting in the Cloister! We're discussing Merlin Stone's classic, When God Was a Woman. Explore here. 💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

As the season of spring unfurls before us, we contemplate the symbol of the garden. Different from the lush vitality of wild nature, the garden tends to be protected by a fortress, guarded by angels, with something sacred and special at its very center. Join us as we explore the meaning of the garden and its occulted fertility, moving through famous gardens like Eden and the Garden of the Hesperides, and how these gardens are a reminder of the sacred space of the womb, the generative creative processes of life, and that which we must protect first, in order for true growth to occur. 📚 Our next book club book is WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN, by Merlin Stone! Join us in The Cloister for a conversation about this book, which will be held on May 19th. 📚💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

This episode offers a conversation a bit more personal, and more candid, about our experiences of working in our fields of tarot and astrology. Both of our disciplines can be considered healing modalities, but what does it really mean to be a healer in the modern age? How can we keep our work grounded and human, yet still invite in a connection with something more numinous? We chat about the ways in which being a healer is really more of offering a sacred mirror to our querents, allowing them to see their complexities with nuance and compassion--that's where we believe the true healing emanates from. For our dream portion of the show, we explore a listener's dream and synchronicity of being struck by lightning.🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

The egg, or the cosmic egg, is a primal symbol of creation. In honor of spring truly getting underway, episode 33 of Soror Mystica explores the egg in all its procreative glory. Eggs are present in mythologies the world over, often coming up in explanations of the birth of the world, which usually is figured by the bifurcation of an egg which splits into sky and earth. Join us as we explore the mysteries of egg symbolism as it emerges in religious traditions, creation myths, mystery cults, and of course, as a symbol of the potential contained within the feminine. Contemplations of the binary of necessity and potential, the Temperance card, the rebus, the mandorla of the World card, fire and water lend deeper context to this symbol. Eggs, snakes, and ancestors emerge, here, and we hope this episode is nourishing as spring gets underway. At the end of this episode, we interpret a listener's dream of being presented with a dagger. Submit *your* dream symbol to us at our website.ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mariana will be teaching Archetypal Tarot 101, explore hereCristina will be teaching Astrology for Beginners, explore hereOur book club meets April 13th to discuss Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, join us here!🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

In honor of the Vernal Equinox, this episode is dedicated to the shimmering, gently unfurling symbol of Spring! With winter behind us, the Sun and his warmth grows wilder and more golden with each passing day. But there is more to this season than the warming of the world. Spring is associated with the themes of resurrection, fertility, and the reclamation of the sovereign path. Our listener symbol this episode is a contemplation of the theme of being chased in our dreams. Calling all astro-curious listeners of this show ~ Cristina is going to be teaching "Astrology for Beginners" this spring! Get all the details and your early-bird discount, here! https://www.cristinafarella.com/astrology-for-beginnersOur BOOK CLUB will be meeting April 13th, to discuss Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red. Join us by joining The Cloister today! 🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

Oracles and prophetic vision were paramount to life in the ancient world. Along with astrology and haruspicy, consultation of the oracle was recognized as an important way of connecting with the will and vision of the divine. We live in a world that has stripped away the importance of the oracle and her voice, and so in this episode, we explore stories of the Oracle at Delphi, Apollo, Python, and Gaia, Cassandra, and expressions of the feminine oracle, and snake connections in prophecy. We also contemplate the split between the "mantic," uncontrolled oracle (associated with the feminine) and the "prohetes," the interpreter of the divinations, oftentimes associated with the masculine. Sit with us as we ask the question, what does it mean to crack open the boundary between mortal and oracular realms, and how can we connect with the oracular through divination? Can we connect to the personal oracular through nature, through the body? How can we best translate our intuitive knowing into empowering insights? How do we find truth in the oracular?For our listener symbol portion of the show, we examine the synchronistic discovery of four leaf clovers in one of our listener's lives.We loved this episode, and hope you do, too. Links and Announcements!There's just a few days more to enroll in Cristina's new class on Chiron in myth and astrology, starting on March 10th! Learn more here!What We're ReadingMariana: Healers on Healing, Richard CarlsonCristina: Brideshead Revisited (still!), The Greeks and the Irrational, E.R. DoddsThanks to our episode partner Tending the Mysteryhttps://www.tendingthemystery.com@tendingthemystery on Instagram🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

The ouroboros is one of our most mysterious and powerful symbols, denoting the simultaneity of life, subsequent endings and beginnings, death and rebirth, completion and totality, solar power and bravery, an encircling of the world...  As an alchemical concept the ouroboros represented the circular nature of the alchemist's work, or what Jung interpreted as the integration of shadow, an evocation of man as "prima materia." Join us in this episode where we immerse ourselves in the realm of the world-snake, and explore new ways to understand and work with this symbol, as a reminder of our totality. Special thanks to this episode's' ad partner Capturing Yinz! https://www.capturingyinz.com@capturing_yinzWhat We're ReadingCristina: Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn WaughMariana: The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, Robert M. PlaceJoin Cristina's new class on Chiron, the wounded healer centaur, in myth and astrology, starting March 10th: Explore here🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

When it comes to romantic love, the heart is the symbol that most immediately comes to mind. When we're passionate, we move from the heart, and when we're disappointed, our hearts can break. The heart is central, literally, to our functioning, and so in this episode, we explore different ways of understanding and holding the heart, letting it be messy, complex, and expansive. Join us as we explore the heart's Aphrodisian qualities, it's kingly glare, it's connection to devotion and the spiritual, it's sulphuric and solar radiance. May this guide you into Valentine's Season with heart-deepening awareness :) Special thanks to this episode’s ad partner, Capturing Yinz https://www.capturingyinz.com@capturing_yinz🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a BOOK CLUB, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

What does it mean to approach a threshold? Prevalent in myths, fairy tales, sagas, ancient hymns, thresholds represent a point of departure from the profane to the sacred. Thresholds demarcate the space between realms, and our passage through them is transformative. But how do we know when we’re at a “threshold moment”? And what do we do when we find ourselves navigating the difficulty of said passage? Tune in to this episode, where we explore the thresholds in myth, dreams, astrology, and tarot, and offer perspective on what it means to find transformation through life’s unique threshold moments. Special thanks to this episode’s ad partner, Capturing Yinz https://www.capturingyinz.com@capturing_yinz on Instagram!Don’t miss Cristina’s newest class, PROPHETIC ASTEROIDS: ORACLES IN MYTH AND ASTROLOGY, a three week lecture series on seers, prophets, and oracles in mythology, and an exploration of their mythic asteroids. Together we’ll build an understanding of where we meet our inner oracles. https://www.cristinafarella.com/prophetic-asteroids🐚 Join The Cloister 🐚Our new community membership space is up and running, offering a sweet community chat, bonus podcast episodes bi-weekly, a book club, and even a dream interpretation space! Join us here.💓 Leave Us A Review 💓If you love our show, you can help us reach curious minds and hearts by leaving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your pods! Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast journey. 🌹 Advertise With Us 🌹Would you like your product or shop to be featured as an ad partner on Soror Mystica? Explore advertising options here!🧩 Share Your Symbols 🧩Do you have a symbol that pops up in dreams, in your tarot card pulls, or in your personal experience that puzzles you? If you’d like to hear us talk about your personal symbol on our show, feel free to share your story with us here.📸 Find Us On Instagram 📸Soror MysticaMariana LouisCristina Farella

The lion! A symbol of sovereignty, regality, solar power, and bravery, associated with kings of all kinds. These are the primary associations we call up, when asked to contemplate the lion in all his golden glory, but upon a closer look, the lion holds more than meets the eye. At the beginning of a new calendar year, there is as much potential for hope as there is exhaustion. We can connect with the symbol of the lion as a reminder of our innate courage, fortitude, and sovereignty. Join us as we explore the big cat's connection to kings and goddesses, to the Strength card in the tarot and the Leo constellation, green and red lions in alchemy, the lion's appearance in the myths of heroes like Hercules as well as the famous feminine apostle Thecla, to deepen our understanding of what this creature conjures in our imaginations. May we all step into our own brave, leonine selves as we being a new year. LinksEnroll in Mariana's new course, Tarot and ShadowSubscribe to Cristina's new SubstackShare Your Dream Symbol With Us!Advertise With Us!Special thanks to this episode's ad parter: The Jung Archademy