In this episode, we dive deep into the themes of the High Priestess card, which represents intuition, serenity, and the divine goddess. The High Priestess guides us into the mystery of the subconscious and our relationship to the void, ultimately clearing the way to hear our inner truth. Our guest today is Alana Fairchild, who is the author of over 20+ Oracle decks and books, including the Sacred Rebels Oracle and Wild Kuan Yin decks. We talk about integrating the divine feminine, how to attune your sensitivity to subtle energies, and so much more! We also talk about Alana’s creation process and how she uses divine feminine energy in her work.
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Listen to the GRACED Podcast
00:00 Introduction
00:52 Giveaway Details to Win the Wild Kuan Yin Oracle!
1:20 Interview begins, introducing Alana Fairchild
01:55 Alana’s big three – sun, moon, and rising
03:56 Diving into the themes of the High Priestess card
08:11 Trust ourselves in the process of the unknown
12:26 Aligning yourself with your Soul DNA
16:45 Co-creation with the Universe
18:18 Divine feminine in the creation process
19:36 AD – Alana’s course – Awaken Three Sacred Shamanic Lineages of the Heart
21:54 Using your sensitivity as a satellite
23:27 Working with Deities
30:52 Rituals in a creative practice
36:11 Where to follow up with Alana
36:49 Endtro
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Full Transcript
💖 INTRODUCTION
Hello hello! Welcome to the GRACED podcast where we talk about how we can infuse more everyday magic into your everyday life through rituals, wellness, tarot, creativity, and more.
Today’s guest is Alana Fairchild, a prolific author who has written over 20 oracle decks and books! I actually have used Alana’s decks before in my own life prior to having her on the podcast and can speak to their divine infusion of energy!
Alana and I talk about the themes of the High Priestess, going deep beyond the surface, trusting your intuition, and leaning into the messages of the mysterious void, as well as themes of divine feminine energy, which the High Priestess so bewilderingly embodies.
To celebrate AAPI month this May, we are doing a giveaway of one of Alana’s Wild Kuan Yin Oracle, which I did a collective oracle reading with during this week’s Mysticscopes. Make sure to check out that episode out to see what collective card popped up! To enter the giveaway, leave a podcast review and follow us on social media!
Now let’s get into the episode!
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✨Interview begins, introducing Alana Fairchild
Grace Duong: Hello and welcome to the Mystic Mondays podcast, where everyday magic starts here. My name is Grace Duong, the creator of Mystic Mondays and your host for today’s episode.
Today, our card is the High Priestess, which represents intuition, serenity, and the divine goddess. The High Priestess guides us into the mystery of the subconscious and our relationship to the void, ultimately clearing the way to hear our inner truth. To explore the themes of the High Priestess, I’m so excited to introduce my guest today, Alana Fairchild, the author and creator of several Oracle decks, books and offerings like music, meditations and courses.Alana’s detailed and embodied descriptions adds a layer of depth to her Oracle decks, embodying mystery deities and guidance to meet you where you are.
Hello, Alana. I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today. And I’m actually the proud owner of several of your decks.
Alana Fairchild: Hi, Grace.
Grace Duong: And I love to use them in my everyday life to add meaning and guidance and also ritual because I’ve noticed you’ve incorporated a lot of rituals into your cards.
Alana Fairchild: Yes, yeah, I love including a way for people to engage with the energy of the message and then bring it into the body and really experience that sacredness, that energy.
Grace Duong: Yeah, definitely. And I’d love to dive into the themes of the High Priestess.
✨ALANA’S BIG THREE
Grace Duong: But first to kick off, what is your big three, your Sun, Moon, and Rising? And how do these Zodiac Signs resonate with you?
Alana Fairchild: It’s funny you ask because very recently I had a Vedic astrology reading, and that moved it all three. So I was fascinated.
So in Western astrology, Sun Cancer, Rising and Moon is in Taurus. And then in Vedic astrology, it’s actually Sun Gemini, and Rising and Moon in Aries. And I really reflected on that because they’re quite different energies. And then I thought I quite like having two. And then I thought Vedic’s probably accurate because that’s a very Gemini kind of thing to embrace. But yeah, it was huge to have that shift. It was like a whole other quality of permission opened up around the way to work with my energy in a very physical kind of embodied way.
Grace Duong: Yeah, and I feel like the different signs also represent different parts of you.
Alana Fairchild: Yes. Yes, yeah, I mean, absolutely.
I could talk to you about astrology for like the next 17 days straight. I’m absolutely obsessed. I used to be in astrology. I mean, I still am, but I used to practice many, many years ago and did kind of unconventional things with charts, like did soul charts for people and when they were given a spiritual name, I’d kind of interpret the spiritual chart of that name and it’s just, it’s such a beautiful, beautiful language. And then Vedic astrology is just next level. A very kind of different approach but there’s a lot of common ground between the eastern and western approaches which is kind of beautiful and kind of what we sort of need on the planet. I think that capacity for integration of diversity and different view. So yeah I loved it.
Grace Duong: Yeah, and having that foundation of astrology, but also how we can apply it to have a deeper meaning of our lives through our charts. And even though they have differences, I think the similarities can still give us awareness into the deeper parts of ourselves.
Alana Fairchild: Yes, yeah, it’s like a sort of secret language that a lot of people know from a lot of different cultures and that’s quite beautiful as well, I feel.
✨HIGH PRIESTESS THEMES
Grace Duong: Now let’s dive into the themes of the High Priestess card. What is your relationship to this card and how do you relate to the High Priestess?
Alana Fairchild: I absolutely love this card. It’s probably my favorite Tarot card if there is such a thing, because Tarot is just generally amazing and I love it and have done for decades but I have a person relationship with the High Priestess because it’s funny that we’re talking about this one.
My first spiritual teacher when I met her, I went for psychic reading and she didn’t use Tarot but she mentioned the High Priestess and we sort of sat down and it was at a time in my life when
I was really very lost in terms of how to express this passion that I had for all things kind of spiritual and left of center and how to bring that into my life in a very practical way. So a friend suggested that I go and see this lady for a reading and I did, and I sat down and the first thing she said to me was “You’re very much the High Priestess”. I saw you in past lives walking around temples and things like that. And that was it! When she said that, I was just like “Awe!” and I thought I have to study with this woman which I did for a couple of years and learnt psychic readings and about the aura and chakras and all that kind of foundational stuff. So from that point, I kind of felt this sense of meaning and connection with the High Priestess archetype.And for me, we all have this. Like the High Priestess to me is the soul.
It’s that deep feminine soul energy and it’s not only in a female body, it’s actually the human soul, that capacity that we have at that deep heart level to be receptive and to be open not just in sort of every day ways, but in quite mystical ways being open to the energy of different dimensions, being open to really the interdimentionality of our own beings.
So we are human, we are spiritual, we have this capacity to tune into the subtle energies of nature and not only the beauty physically but that subtle energy that can be so healing. We are in that sense the High Priestess energy. We carry it within us. And I think we talked briefly before about ritual and healing processes and that kind of thing.
Those kind of seemingly normal actions that are done with an intention to connect with non-ordinary reality or—what’s another way of saying it—the more subtle meaningful spiritually infused realities that bring us guidance, bring us healing, bring us messages, and a deep sense of knowing that we may not be able to logically fathom or justify that we know them nonetheless is real and is genuine and it’s true for us. That capacity to connect with those realms of ritual, I feel, is the essence of the High Priestess because even in the Tarot, the classic iconography with her with the two columns on either side, the veil, I like the traditional image with the pomegranate always makes me think of Persephone kind of bridging the gap between the everyday world and then the— I would call it the underworld but it’s sort of the unknown or the deeper parts of life and our own psyche. That energy is so nourishing. I think we really need it. And I think sometimes I kind of wonder how it is that we can live without being depressed or depleted or feeling lost just like we need some kind of nourishment that we might not be able to readily articulate consciously. Say, it’s you know “I need to eat broccoli!” or “I need to go for a run!”
It’s some other kind of deeper reset and I think that is that High Priestess energy saying “Come deeper!” like “Come beneath the surface there’s something here that’s very rejuvenating to the soul and we’ll replenish you and we’ll give you what it is that you’re yearning for that you can’t quite articulate but your soul knows what it is nonetheless.” I feel like I’ve said about fifty things there but anyway, that’s my kind of loving appreciation of that energy. So vast, she’s so vast.
Grace Duong: Yeah, there’s so much wisdom that you shared and the High Priestess is very much rooted in a very beautiful way in this mystery in the void and the unknown, and so I’m wondering in what ways do you connect with the mystery of the unknown because I feel like in society, we’re so trained to want to know things and to want to have an outcome and I think that can be the root of depression, like you mentioned, or anxiety, or just the balance of the knowing and the not knowing.
How do we come to just trust ourselves in the process?
Alana Fairchild: What a beautiful question. I think We don’t have to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water, like there’s nothing wrong with saying “Oh, I would like something good to happen, you know?” I feel that this is my destiny and like I don’t know you want to write book or you want to manifest a business or whatever it is that’s in your heart. There’s nothing wrong with that but I think what I’ve learned from my own experience and where i think the trouble is in mainstream culture at least is that it’s the bit in between that we kind of freak out about. So like we know this part, you know the intention, and then we know maybe some general idea of what the outcome could look like and then there’s all that part in the middle and the High Priestess is the in between. She’s the part of us that can bridge from one side to the other, the beginning and the end. And the middle part is where I’ve had to really learn about letting go, and surrendering and trusting in the mystery and I think when we want to manifest from the soul it’s very different to manifesting from the will you need will, will power and focus and discipline when you’re manifesting from the soul but not to control things and in mainstream society we are taught you use will power and you make things happen and there’s a learning in that and it’s not bad necessarily but it’s limiting and there will be a point where you outgrow it. And there will be a point where you realize I can keep climbing the mountains that I choose but they’re not necessarily going to give me what I want at the end.
There might be a limited sense of “Oh, that was an important accomplishment!” And that’s fantastic! Be proud of that, enjoy it, but also recognize where it cannot take you and that’s where we kind of enter the realm of the High Priestess because we know we need something, we know here to manifest, we kind of have that innate butterfly intelligence that’s saying some part of my psyche is in caterpillar mode and it needs to disintegrate and devour itself and it’s probably not going to feel great but I need to kind of be in that place of unknowing to let something that is within me that is beyond my conscious mind and is beyond the way that I currently think, and the way that I currently see the world and understand myself. I know that it’s in me. I know that there is spiritual intelligence like a spiritual DNA.
Just like the butterfly wisdom that’s within and I have to trust it and I can’t control it. And at some point you have to decide, am I going to let go and allow it to happen or not? And I think where that becomes frightening is that we just made our conditioning. And it’s a good thing actually, it’s a sign of progress.
We usually think “Oh, I’m not doing it properly because I’m worried!” but it’s a sign of progress. Because if you weren’t pushing against that conditioning you wouldn’t have any negative reaction to it or any resistance. So I think just reframing when stuff starts to get a bit like mysterious real like High Priestess territory and you think I really feel in my heart like I’m moving in the right direction but everything feels like it’s testing me, it’s testing my faith. I can’t see immediate results, it doesn’t necessarily make logical sense, maybe the people around you really love you but they think you’re a bit crazy because they don’t understand what you’re doing and you can’t really answer that because you really know what you’re doing either. Except that you feel you’re moving in a direction that feels authentic for your heart. That’s High Priestess territory. And sometimes when I’ve gone through it because I just live in that, 90% of the time these days probably more. It’s just where I am so I’ve got used to it. I don’t always like it and sometimes it feels like I’m playing a game of who’s going to break first with the universe like, you know? How long do I have to kind of be in this and allow things to happen, but I found that the bigger the transformation the more that you are going to benefit from whatever it is that’s happening and the more that that’s therefore going to benefit all beings the more that you’ll be tested and you have to kind of go deeper and really embrace that High Priestess energy and just accept that whilst logic and reasoning and intellect definitely has a place in your life and the world it can’t control what your soul is going to do and has to kind of almost be reigned in and brought under so that it can serve your intuition but not block it. And that’s the High Priestess within really.
Grace Duong: That is really beautiful! And I feel like with the High Priestess, she almost acts like a messenger between the unknown, and guards this gate between the void and you as a human being on this planet and just as like whispering things to you whether you like it or not or whether you’re paying attention or not, there’s a certain pull between the receptivity of the High Priestess and the frustration that can happen when we’re not listening to this soul DNA as you’re calling it. And so I’m wondering if you’ve had any of these lessons or life circumstances that have happened to you where you have really had to listen to your intuition and life is just kind of like sending you messages that are telling you that you’re not aligned right now.
Alana Fairchild: I mean, like just a lot. Yeah, it’s like driving a car, you know? And you might even be on the right road but you know you don’t just kind of hold the wheel in that sit there’s all these micro corrections so I think there is this sense of we’re kind of engaging with reality and there is this sort of push/pull kind of feeling around Do I go in this way? Am I getting almost seduced or conditioned without even realizing it? To get pulled into something or am I able to stay in the truth of what I feel even right down to things like how do you choose to respond when the planet is in massive upheaval politically in health situations like how do you show up and be present with that just in your own and in your own way now if you’re interacting with the public definitely but also just how you interact with the people around you. Can you hold space? Can you be respectful? Can you notice the urge and the desire to be pulled into something and to even take a stance and become unyielding around what’s happening trying to control it so you can show up in a way that is connected with your heart and that’s a daily choice but around intuition i mean many things my goodness when you were speaking I was thinking which what would I share with you because there’s been so many—probably one of the major ones was around that time that I was first connecting with that High Priestess energy in a conscious way this lifetime and I was working in a job that I didn’t like. I wanted to make a transition into this spiritual field I didn’t really know how. I just knew I was in this job and really unhappy. In fact I had one day where—and that was my last day officially because I just thought this is a sign, but it wasn’t something external it was me I went to the threshold to walk into the office and I thought I feel like I want to start screaming. And I thought that’s not a normal thing to feel about entering into room. So I thought okay I need to leave this job. And I got through that day, and I went home that afternoon, and I just trusted I trusted my body and I resigned and I instantly felt relief and then shortly after a huge amount of panic because I had nothing else to go to. And then just popped into my head that there was a new age center around the corner from where I was living and I thought I’m just going to ring that center and ask if they’re looking for anyone to work there. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I just did that and the women just said to me “Oh yeah! We’re looking for a psychic to work 2 days a week, would you like to do a reading for me?” I said sure, so I just did a reading for her and she said “Yeah, you’re fine you can start.” and I did and that was it. It just kind of happened, and I’ve had not that I’m saying to people just leave your jobs like everyone’s got a different process but for me my particular process seems to be that my soul likes me to move from that sense of what is my body and my intuition telling me, and the intellect and the rationality is part of it like. I have to be a little bit pragmatic but I can’t allow that to stop me from doing but kind of like a fear.
Don’t allow the fear of what seems like it’s going to work to stop you from doing what you feel within your essence you need to do, because there is this crazy spiritual creativity that I experience regularly, I experience it in writing but just in my life will things work out even while you’re sitting I think this act would still be happening, like it makes no sense. Little miracles, you know? It’s not just the dramatic sense of miracles it’s little everyday things that when we’re in our zone, and we’re in our flow, and we’re in that space of authentic connection our life does seem to move according to this path that doesn’t—at least to me—makes a lot of sense. And I think it’s not just about having an intellectual idea of that also having a sense of “Okay, well how do I do that?” Like how do I get into that space, in that zone? And I feel for me that’s part of why I do what I do with publishing and courses and things like that because I want to give people just a really accessible way that they can start to drop into that other world within their own soul and start to feel that it is as real if not more so eventually than the conditioning and the stuff that we’re told.
Grace Duong: Yes, absolutely! And I feel like there’s also this co-creation that’s happening when you’re really trusting the universe and the High Priestess is actually associated with the number 2. Which I feel like is relationship with oneself and relationship with the universe or whatever you’d like to call it.
You mentioned quitting your job which I actually really relate to because I also quit my job. And I remember going into panic attack because I didn’t necessarily have a plan. I just knew that I constantly felt frustrated and I knew that this path wasn’t for me. And if you had asked a younger version of myself like, Did you ever think you were going to be making Tarot and Oracle decks? I would have been like: “What is that?” But spirit had led me into this path too and I suppose it all works out for a reason. Even if you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Alana Fairchild: Especially then when we don’t know what’s going to happen because that’s when we’re in that space of possibilities where we’re outside of our limited thinking. So it’s a good space, it’s not a comfortable space but it’s a good space to be in. It definitely clears the path for more possibilities to happen otherwise. I think of it as my calendar and if I keep filling it up there’s no room for exploration or discovery or potential and when we start to clear away the things that no longer resonate, I feel that it brings in other things that are more in alignment with who we are and what we’re becoming.
Alana Fairchild: Yes, absolutely. Yeah!
Grace Duong: So I’d love to ask you— I’d love to ask you what piece of advice would you give your younger self?
Alana Fairchild: I would just say trust in the things that feel right and seem impossible.
Grace Duong: Beautiful! And how do you relate to this feeling of divine feminine? Which I feel like is very present in your decks, into your creation process, and balancing that between this pragmatic sense of yourself with this intuitive sense of yourself.
Alana Fairchild: I mean the whole creation process for me is a very organic feminine kind of experience. I don’t plot things out, I start with a seed of an idea, I might not even know the title. Like the Sacred Rebels Oracle for example, I’ve rewritten that manuscript 3 times. And it was at the end of the third one that I realized the title was Sacred Rebels. For other things, I might start with just a very brief idea or a feeling, might not even be a clarified idea, like with a deck that’s coming out probably in 2023 based on divine feminine shamanism. That was a feeling that I had almost twelve years before and it had just been percolating and percolating and I’ve tried to find different artists, nothing fit, and then I’d forgotten about it actually. And it was nearly about 10 years later, I found a different artist, and I just felt this connection with her work, beautiful work! And I thought “Oh, this is something!” I felt the resonance it was like a cord being struck
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If you are interested in working even deeper with Alana, she is teaching a course called Awaken 3 Sacred Shamanic Lineages of the Heart: Experience Profound Renewal Through the Medicine of the Dark Goddess, Cicada Spirit Guide & Christ Consciousness:
In this course you will:
- Begin to fearlessly value your unique spiritual attractions to empower yourself completely, enrich your inner being, and manifest your sacred purpose
- Recognize signs of the Dark Goddess as shamanic initiation in your life — and understand what this means for you and how you can respond creatively & so much more
If you are interested in learning more, you can register for this free virtual event with the link in the show notes!
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Alana Fairchild: and I approached her and she was keen and my publisher was happy and so I began to write it. And then I realized, this is the deck that I wanted to write 12 years ago that I had started from a completely different, much more integrated feminine place. I was stronger within my own practice it just felt right and it was the right time. So the intention was there but I couldn’t go about it in a kind of logical sort of way because—at least for me, but I suspect for many people when you’re connecting with that feminine energy it meanders in a way that might seem I was going to say “inefficient” might not seem to be having that wisdom but it really does—it has a method, it has an intelligence to it, I found that if I trust that, then I do creatively, I never know what the experience of writing a new deck is going to be like I’ve written probably there’s more than 20 now. There’s a lot, I’ve lost count. Or a book—I’ve written a lot of those—or meditation, or music I never know what it’s going to be and everyone is different. Every time I sit down, every project is different, and I like that! It’s like having a conversation with a new person. It’s like are they going to be some random jokester person that’s going to make you laugh, and keep you kind of guessing or they going to be like a deep, mellow, kind of quiet person, where you get into the depths and you think “Gosh, this is so meaningful!” You don’t know, that personality starts to come through and the process reflects that. Is it fast? Is it slow? Do I have portions that come through and then it gets deepened? It really varies and I enjoy that and because I have two qualities that can make it difficult to be in the world but great for creativity and that is being highly receptive and highly porous—psychically porus. So I absorb things, take them in, and really feel it very very easily. I have struggled with that we might just say sensitivity I’ve struggled with that over the years but many years ago my guidance gave me a piece of advice which I found very helpful and I’ll share it with you because there may be people listening to this that also maybe struggle with sensitivity at different times, especially on the spiritual path because you’re opening up and trying to become more sensitive and more attuned to subtle energy so what they said to me was “think of it like a receiving dish, and you might be this huge receiving dish as your soul grows but you get to choose where you orient it so you don’t have to change the nature of the dish, you just change the orientation. So with that I found just doing spiritual practice where I was connecting with energies that would be beautiful, healing, uplifting, stabilizing, miraculous, feminine, and amazing. Which are very very helpful and I just had to be careful that I didn’t get sucked into the drama or whatever. That just happens when you’re a human being interacting with another human being and we’re in a dualistic mind set and projections are firing away. That’s it, it’s just mechanical. It feels personal but it’s just freakin’ mechanical.
When that’s going on a bit too much I just kind of think “okay, I just need to come back.” and make sure that the the balance is always skewing towards putting the receiving dish in the direction of that which is going to nourish and nurture. And I feel, there’s one other thing that I want to just mention here what I was thinking about when you were describing the High Priestess like a bridge. One of the goddesses that I love is Tara. She’s known as a bridge, a star, a tree, wish fulfilling gem. She has many names but the reason I mentioned her is that she resonates with this High Priestess energy and she’s very fast which I think we love.
As modern people, we don’t want to do 10 years of spiritual practice to get like a little inkling of something. We kinda want it now. And because she’s so swift, as we develop confidence in her, we can actually have that experience of strengthening our own High Priestess energy but also that capacity to be the bridge— And the bridge is the tension holder between one thing and the other thing.
I think we experience that in our lives fairly consistently. And what I love about Tara is she’s very easy to access. We just say a mantra. There’s many mantras for Tara, one of the simplest ones is “Om Tare Tam Svaha” and you can sit in meditation, you can say that, and you can imagine the most beautiful light whatever color resonates for you in your heart “Om Tare Tam Svaha” and just feel her emanate in your heart and that’s it, that’s a spiritual practice.That’s a way to orient the receiving dish in the right direction. There you go, 2 minutes! Do it morning and night if you want to, before you go to bed, when you wake up, a couple of minutes, done!
Grace Duong: I love that! I feel like Tara is such a powerful goddess to connect to and I’ve noticed a lot of deities in your decks and so I’m wondering, What rituals you’re connecting with these days, and if there are certain deities that you’re connecting to recently or a powerful memory that you have with a deity?
Alana Fairchild: I’ve been in connection with that world fairly consciously since I was a little girl, so even when I was a child I used to lay on my back in the garden at my house and look at the sky and feel that I was communing with the word I had then was God because I was raised in a Catholic household, so that really resonated for me and I’ve never lost that. And what’s happened is it’s just like that was one petal of the flower, and as I’ve grown and explored different deities and different spiritual and religious traditions and I’ve explored quite a few.
I’ve kind of lost a sense of singular affinity with any of them and develop this sense of loving connection with sort of all of them. At a deeper level, in a mystical way, and it’s like just other petals of that divine flower have opened. So for me, I have got to the point that whilst I connect with specific deities Tara, Quan Yin, Mother Mary, Isis, Kali Ma on a daily basis, that’s part of my morning meditation practice, spiritual practice. And there are others that I connect with from time to time as well, more masculine deities when I feel that energy is necessary. Because sometimes it is, so whilst there’s that there’s this understanding that it’s one that’s kind of where I’ve come to, so it’s a little bit like multivitamin. And sometimes you think “I need the multivitamin, but I really need the B this morning, or I really need the vitamin A or C or whatever it is.” But I recognize that they all belong to the one so it doesn’t feel separate to me, or like I’m choosing one over the other. It’s just connection. And sometimes show up in dreams, meditations, it can be unexpected who shows up and when.
I’ve had Jesus show up in dreams a few times, he’s always like so powerful, and rarely speaks and just does something like moves his hand or does something so simple. That’s so powerful and speaks volumes, so I learn a lot from these, these divine beings, these enlightened beings, they’re very real to me.
Grace Duong: Definitely! I had an experience with Ganesh once, and it was during a sound healing and he had just appeared. I think I actually bought myself one of those Ganesh opalite figurines for myself because at the time I was very focused on breaking through barriers or obstacles that were standing in my way. and he just appeared and it was beautiful wash of light that just filled my entire body and it’s experiences like that where you just know that you’re not the only one creating this life for yourself and that you do have help.
Whether you like to call it guides, spiritual team, or connecting to certain deities and their energy. There is certainly help on the other side if you’d like to ask for it and to receive it which I feel like is a very High Priestess theme, of this receptivity to being open to that type of information.
Alana Fairchild: I love that you said that. Sometimes people worry, I’ve had people say to me I’m worried that if I call on the guides I’ll almost deny their attention to someone else. We sort of project our humanity and our human limitations: and it just doesn’t exist with an enlightened being. They are beyond the dualism, they can be in multiple places at once, and I always say to people the more that you call on those divine energies whatever it is for you it actually doesn’t matter. I know some people might not like that point of view, but that’s my point of view, that it actually doesn’t matter which being, what matters most is that you feel resonance in your heart. And if that’s there, then that’s going to feel like a strong connection for you.
You’re going to get more openness to that presence and because in my view they’re all one anyway, that’s why it doesn’t matter, but the forms are there for us because we need them sometimes we need to connect with that Ganesh form, I love that energy. It’s playful, it’s strong, it’s childlike, but it’s wise, beautiful! So I feel that opening to that is really important and knowing that when you do and when you lift yourself spiritually, you help to lift everyone around you. It’s not a selfish act, it’s not self indulgent, it’s not denying someone something, it’s actually a beneficial thing like opening up the windows. So that you can let more light and fresh air into your room doesn’t just benefit you, right?
Everyone in the room gets that benefit too. So having that sense is really important and then other thing which Tibetan master told me: Did you know the enlightened ones are always there like super close? Like they’re right here and we forget because we get into—it’s like the receiving dish. The receiving dish gets a bit oriented towards maybe our old fears or something just feels very real. Something negative feels real and it’s a little bit compelling and a little bit seductive and a little bit like “oh, we get caught up in it!” and we forget and it’s just the whole idea is spiritual practice, doing an Oracle card reading, doing meditation, going for a nature walk and just trying to be really present.
Those simple things, they’re like muscle building for the soul because what they teach us is how to shift the receiving dish, just how to turn it like there’s that button in those big observatories out in the desert that you know the button and the thing goes and it looks at a different you know, whatever the astronomers are studying at the time. So these practices allow us to learn how to turn that little receiving dish to focus on the right thing and it’s just a matter of just shifting it and like “Oh, they’re right here! Everything is fine.”I’m bathed in divine protection and oh my goodness that thing was terrifying a moment ago suddenly isn’t. We’re not in it, we’re able to look at it, and it doesn’t necessarily evaporate. Sometimes it does, but even if it doesn’t it’s like i can look at it from a different perspective rather than feeling consumed by it, I can say, Okay, I have all this divine support, as much as I need and want, and then times infinity. It’s there so maybe I can have a different approach to this or a different perspective.
Grace Duong: What are some of the rituals that you like to do to tune into the different energies of whether you’re about to write, you’re about to do something creative, you’re about to play music, you’re about to connect to a course that you’re creating.
What type of rituals do you like to do in your creation process?
Alana Fairchild: Hmm… that’s an interesting question. It’s very internalized now for me it’s just I drop into my heart, I cut internally, I do the equivalent of cleaning up the space, setting some beautiful altar, and giving myself complete permission to withdraw from the everyday world. And be in—I call it my creator bubble but it’s my hermit cave sometimes it’s just this inner sense of being able to focus and almost like you know in yoga they talk about “drishti” so it’s like you do your yoga pose and have this focus and you’re sort of looking let’s say you’re in warrior to when you’re supposed to look over the tip of your third finger of your extended arm in front of you, right? so you drishti kind of there slightly beyond, you’re looking but you’re not looking with creativity for me it’s sort of like I’m looking but I’m allowing it to bounce back in and I’m sort of looking inward. So anything that facilitates that which is for me nowadays largely a mental thing, I just turn that receiving dish all the way around. And it’s in and that’s enough. If I do that then I open and then it’s sort of like becoming like a lake. I’m just waiting to see what energy, what divine feeling is going to impress itself on that lake—wait, it’s that line from Rumi. If you want to be written on become a blank page, right? So it’s that feeling of just becoming so receptive and just a small starting point so it might be as I said, like a title or an idea and then I just see what comes through and for me it’s like water that flows. That’s something that might not be the same for everyone but I do feel that our creativity is very unique and it’s not that it’s not there it’s just finding how it works for you. You know, what your particular creative process might be?
Grace Duong: Yeah, as a multi-dimensional creator how do you embody all of these parts of yourself and what are you working on in the future?
Alana Fairchild: There’s a lot of dancing around the lounge room that happens at random times happened to me the other day because it just felt like so much energy and I needed to write, I thought I can’t even do this to my brain it’s too much. So I just put on Turkish pop music on, you meet around my lounge room for a while and that kind of helped to pull it into my body. I meditate and I find for me things that are helpful to bringing my mind and my energy into my body really stabilizers, because I can be quite if the energy can get very strong and I can be out of my body before I know it. That’s not particularly helpful so things like yoga, walking, and weightlifting is quite good. It’s so grounded like you can’t be thinking of anything else when you’re out to dead lift 80 kilos or whatever. You’re gonna be in trouble? So you need to focus, and be really present, and kind of hep. Because complex movements like that too require that you’re really aware of multiple parts of your body at once, it’s like a meditation. So I do that and then I try to give myself time out, and I also try not to push. That’s quite hard for me because I like to just get out there and get things done but that’s not the way spirit works.
Spirit accomplishes many things but it’s more like nature. It likes to move in its own way and for me that’s a constant learning because I’m not particularly patient, I’ve had to learn that. So just ways of living really is what what does it for me.
Grace Duong: When it comes to being a multi-dimensional creator you know sometimes we’re pigeonholed into doing the one thing so I know primarily your writer and you collaborate with a ton of artists which I’d love to hear more insight about with your collaborations.
But also you’re a musician, and a teacher, and so I’m wondering how you embody all of these different parts of yourself as Alana, and not as what someone might try to put you in a box in.
Alana Fairchild: That’s an interesting question. I just do what I do and then and that’s where I move from. I don’t really reference—I mean, I was going to say, I don’t reference how things are perceived externally. I’m aware of it sometimes but
I’m a very inwardly oriented person, I suppose I’m an introvert. Definitely, I’m trying to think what that INFP I think I am, but anyway it doesn’t really matter. But I just need to do what I need to do like breathing. Basically if I need to do this, I do that. If I need to dance, if I need to write, I follow the creative energy and then how that is received and how people perceive that and what they make of that. I can’t control it and I’d never be defined by that.
I’d never just do something because people think this is what she does. Even with Oracle decks they’re all very different from each other and initially people didn’t always know what to make of that they were expecting the same thing with maybe a different artist but that’s not how I work. Now, it seems to be something that people appreciate and they like that. I want to help people but I have to be true to who I am to be able to do that. And so sometimes that is not particularly conventional or particularly predictable, but I’m okay with that. That’s spirit, right? It’s a wild card. You never know what it’s going to come out with it. So it’s like “I’m okay!”
Grace Duong: So what has your soul journey taught you so far?
Alana Fairchild: I think it’s really simple: connect with yourself, trust, let go, and don’t give up. Those would be the recurring themes, yeah.
Grace Duong: Beautiful and very easy to remember.
Alana Fairchild: Yeah!
Grace Duong: So, Alana, thank you so much for joining me it’s been really wonderful to have this soulful conversation with you. Where can listeners follow up with you?
Alana Fairchild: The easiest place is probably via the website so that’s just alanafairchild.com and then you’ll find me on social media. I’m all over the place. Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, I’m on Tiktok a little bit as well. Yeah, you’ll find the links on the website.
Grace Duong: Amazing and all of those links will be in the show notes. So keep an eye out for Alana’s new creations and also check out all of her wonderful decks like such a prolific amount of work that Alana has put out in the world and thank you so much Alana for being here.
Alana Fairchild: Thank you, Grace! Thanks so much love to everyone who’s listening, yeah. Namaste!
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✨ ENDTRO + GIVEAWAY DETAILS
Thanks so much for tuning into today’s episode with Alana Fairchild! I’m so grateful for Alana’s wisdom and for sharing her insights today surrounding the themes of the High Priestess. Obviously there was so much more we could get into because the themes of the High Priestess is so deep but I am so grateful we were able to cover what we did today.
As a reminder, you can win one of Alana’s decks – the Wild Kuan Yin Oracle deck by leaving a podcast review and following us on social media! Links will be in the show notes.
As always, sending you so much Grace, today and everyday.
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