This reading started differently with Dean’s deck being very talkative, setting the stage of a ship returning home on the tide, laden with knowledge and ideas where upon you can set out on a journey of creativity and action. There is an immediate reminder to bring this into a practical, real sense, not to leave it in the mind’s eye, but to bring it down to reality and put it out there. That means there can be failure, and that you should fail. Fail to find your voice, fail to find your audience, fail to create what you see. Only through failure can you bring that which you see into that which is real. You are your own source of power, it lies within you, and it always has. The ever-burning flame is what fuels your creativity, your power to do, to make. What you have in your mind you can bring into reality, with time, patience and your power. Finally, shut-up and listen! You’ve got messages deep within you, just let them rise up. Your emotions and your throat chakra will connect and you will speak truth and knowledge. Be the Oracle, speak deep truths with your work. Create contemplation. Embrace intuition.

Dean and Jack are started with the image of a boiling pot, simmering over an open flame where metal meets fire. We found ourselves with a kitchen witch considering what they make, how they make it and if it’s right for them to make. They have a responsibility to choose well. Then the seeker of waves comes with their potential energy and a message to trust the dreams that rise up from your depths. When you are aligned with what you are putting into the world, you can allow your imagination to be filled with what springs from your core. All of this then becomes part of the towering cathedral that is your body and your soul. The potion the Kitchen Witch brews fills the whole chakral bridge with expansion and delight. But like the sage who sits beside the road and waits, they too must sit in peace and find the hardest truth, admitting that they need help. It is a community coming together to cook and share that powers the Kitchen Witch. Finally we are settled down and embraced by the connection of heart to voice, hearing and receiving love, telling and showing love. Like a breeze through the trees wood touches air and is embraced by its passing.

Dean and Jack are met with a ghost from the previous episode, the same card as before, but with a new meaning, a new message. When you are impaled by an event that rocks you to your core, you must pause and remember that it is does not define you. B another card showed its face again, the release from shame. Don’t pick it up, don’t let it in, it is not part of you. To carry it will only claim what is not yours in the first place. In these moments of trauma and pause, take things slow, take things small, do it one piece at a time. You have three beacons to follow. Set them and let your own power and light guide you. Trust yourself, be careful about whose advice you take. Trust your own knowledge, your own vision of truth that comes from within and without. To be human is to have pain, to have trauma. If you work with fire, you will get burned. But that is a natural part of life. Not to be feared or avoided, but to be understood and eventually embraced.

Dean and Jack finally get a reading that starts with the lower chakras, where root and sacral chakras meet, the dance of earth and metal which forms beautiful works of art. This groundedness is then challenged by the imbibing of the universe and the projection of the heart, sending out that sense of self and security to those around us. With all of this beautiful energy and effort, we are quickly reminded that it is our power which drives any of our actions, and that shame is the barrier to using that power to create these emanations. Our hearts are marked by the passing of time, the passing of friends, the passing of love and family. Those marks are not bad or good, they are shapes that influence the way we focus that cosmic energy. It is because of them, not in spite of them that we still love, we still have peace, and we can project joy. Finally, there is a simple reminder that none of these came with ease, without sorrow and grief, and without the act of falling down again and again and again. It is because we rise that we can soar.

Dean and Jack begin with the impossible connection, the crown touching the crown, the universe touching itself and yet here in it we are. The idea of dynamic balance being better than static perfection. That within our connection to something divine we are actively striving to be. The reading became one of external understanding and internal soul work. First it is okay to simply be still. You don’t always have to be doing something to be something. Next that what you experience of the world is also grounded deeply within you. Like water molding wet clay, or seeping down into the earth. From there you have a nourished empty plot of land into which you may plant seeds and see growth, an existential moment of nothing and becoming. To end there was the final reminder that what you feel and what you are connect at the core of your being. That you need to to feel yourself as yourself, but you also need to feel your soul as your inner child, ready for comfort, ready for a hug.

Dean and Jack have another very high energy reading, the intersection of third eye and crown to set the stage. A profession of wanting to see more, to understand more, to gain insight into that which is beyond us. Curiosity influences the way we see the world. Dean’s deck then reminded us to find ourselves within ourselves, as the deep source of waves, the water from which all emotions flow. With ourselves conscious of our being within the context of the great ether, we have a truth to speak to the universe but one that collaborates with others, forming a wave of understanding within an ocean of connection. Which is beautifully summed up in the idea of the first ripple, the very first movement that connects and resonates within all of us. Finally the reading comes to a close with the understanding of how the heart and third eye work together to find collaboration with others, to connect us to the greater idea, the greater truth.

Dean and Jack are immediately greeted by the idea of balance between self and the universe, an intersection of the crown and the root that speaks to cathedrals reaching high above us, still grounded and yet aspiring to be with the ether above. And then the idea of stillness and celebration. A pause on the journey that is a place to reflect, to dance and sing, to be whole and focused purely on right now. All this while the sky above us sings to the heavens, prayers that rise up like smoke and fill the sky with dancing colors. But in all this above and below, there is a call to balance, to actively sink down so that we can rise up. From that balance the truth can be found as our eyes open to the light around us and the dawning of the morning, there is pure joy in seeing things as they truly are.

Dean and Jack struggle to find meaning in this reading. We love learning, especially from the wisdom of others. But that wisdom is not always easy to ingest, to understand and to bring into action. Sometimes it’s hard to open our eyes to the truth of what we’re experiencing. Truth itself is hard, not always what we want it to be, and not always able to be grasped. Like the majesty of two stars orbiting each other, sometimes truth is so big it can’t be known, only experienced. But we have the strength within to encounter these things, to interact with them. To let them wash over us and be part of us. Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is stand up and say “I don’t know.” But we do have the heart to show others what we have learned. To be the source of learning, the unseen pathways through the world that others can follow. Ultimately, what’s true and what’s known are not always the same thing, but trying to interact with them is the journey we must all take.