S3, Ep. 1 | Renewal, Refresh, Reboot, Rebirth and the Phoenix

When we are born and take our first breath, our soul enters this physical flesh, and we become animated. We enter this density and forget what it was like to be a spirit. The only thing that keeps us tethered to that experience is our soul - and as we learn things from this physical experience through our five physical and spiritual senses, our experience as spirit gets further and further away. We start building many programs that display our personality and become masks we wear. We project ways of being upon ourselves like a drive-in movie theater screen. For example, if this happens, it means this is about me or another person. I'm not worthy of love because…, we can't have nice things, that way of life is not for me… or in front of my parents, I act this way; when dating, I'm this way; when at work, I am this way. You have so many autonomous programs and various masks. When you are an adult, you forget entirely who you are. You also get super attached to this rental vehicle of physicality (some of us call it a meat suit) we walk around in. We believe this is all there is - perhaps diving into hedonistic pleasures that physicality has to offer us headlong to cope with the sense that this is all there is. Drinking, eating, sexting your way through life, putting more in, in an attempt to fill the void in your heart where a sense of purpose should be. 

Or you may bury yourself under another identity - mom, soldier, project manager, content creator, influencer. I don't know whatever form of busy floats your boat and how you associate every aspect of yourself with that job or role. But you can't be that role, job, or version of yourself forever. The flesh gives out, our beauty fades, we get injured, we get fat, we lose our strength, our hearing, our sigh. Either way, our purpose can never be found simply in the job we do because we are more than this body and this physical experience. 

We are spirit. (Pause)

We have never been born, and we will never die (as spirit). But this physical body will most certainly die and fall away - that is the one certainty of this physical experience we are all having. Death. 

Wow. Angel. What a way to start out a new season of your podcast on a bright note. I am reminding everyone that they die. This is the truth, though. My job as an estate planning attorney is precisely this - I remind people of their mortality and get them to prepare for it so they do not leave their families a big, stinking, expensive mess when the physical inevitability occurs. It is never too early to plan, but it can always be too late. "if you are having trouble with planning, I can help! Feel free to shoot me an email for more information. Stay tuned until the end of the episode for contact info."

But the point of this podcast today is to talk about a smaller kind of death and rebirth. The type of death held and symbolized within the Rider Waite Tarot card (Death), in the Rune stone Eihwaz, and in the cycle of the Phoenix. Renewal through the conscious choice to let go of your shit. Flush it down the toilet and start fresh. Or the willing submission to the holy fire of transformation - by letting go of the old so there is room for the new.  

Let's briefly talk about the Phoenix in case you need to familiarize yourself with this mythological being. Per my Signs & Symbols sourcebook, the bird symbolizes alchemy because it is reborn for its ashes after voluntarily combusting. Keyword here. Voluntarily. There is a whole process - where the Phoenix goes around the world collecting aromatic wood, herbs, and spices so it can build its funeral pyre in a date palm tree. Then it lights itself on fire and is reborn upon the next day's dawn. 

While alive for 500 to 1500 years, the Phoenix persists only on aromatic wood smoke, thus not harming anything to eat. 

Let's focus on the voluntary submission to the purifying flames, thus bringing rebirth as an archetype for us to explore. More importantly, the ritual. The slow, intentional gathering of the right spices, wood, and herbs, building a nest in a particular place, and performing the act in a specific time-space order for the magickal creatures' transformation. What is critical to this ritual is the intention. The willingness to let go of one life/to die because out the other side is more beauty, joy, and freedom. 

Now, not every change/little death in our lives happens this methodically. We may be forced to renew an aspect of ourselv