Your Creative & Magical Life

Message the show & share your thoughts! July 4th doesn’t feel like a party for me this year (or most years), and I wanted to say why without pretending it’s simple. In this episode, I’m riffing solo, unedited, exploring what the United States is celebrating at 250 years, what we’re ignoring, and what I wish we were celebrating instead. As ever, I use Tarot and astrology as a framework for mean...

Message the show & share your thoughts! A mountain lion shows up in a dream, you turn the page in your calendar and there's an image of the same thing... suddenly you 're wondering whether reality is speaking in symbols or whether your brain is just doing what brains do: pattern recognition. We sit down with Arianna Smith to explore signs and synchronicities as a lived practice — not...

Message the show & share your thoughts! Manifestation can feel like a promise and a threat at the same time. Promise, because we want change. Threat, because so much “manifesting” advice ignores real life constraints, nervous system limits, and the reality of systemic oppression. So we slow it down and get specific, using Tarot as a clear mirror instead of a glossy shortcut. I’m joined by frie...

Message the show & share your thoughts! Doors to the Creative Magic Collective are open ! And you're invited to join our 2026 Astrological Pilgrimage through the Tarot... which is a fancy way of describing a "decan walk" — a fascinating, structured way to explore the Tarot through its astrological associations in real time.  In this episode, I'm joined by Sara Pettit, an as...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode with guest co-host Arianna Smith, we weigh AI’s promise against its costs through a creative, mystical lens, stepping into the messy, practical reality of how we actually use AI. From there we go deeper into the tradeoffs no one wants to talk about — the environmental costs of data centers and  local fights around water and power. We look...

Message the show & share your thoughts! 2025 was The Year of The Hermit (and still is for a couple more weeks). While I didn't move to a mountaintop cave (and you probably didn't either), The Hermit still had lots to teach me this year (and probably you too!). In this episode, I briefly review the imagery, meaning, and archetypal substance of The Hermit...  Then I share five ways I w...

Message the show & share your thoughts! Dreading the holiday push as your creative well runs low?  In this episode, featuring recurring guest Arianna Smith, we explore the tricky balance of managing and riding our creative energy — and our obligations — while tending to our body's need for rest. The episode starts with a little catching up — we chat about recent offerings and some of the...

Message the show & share your thoughts! Cecily welcomes back to the show Ariana Smith — twin, Alaskan homestead kid, IFS-certified therapist, copywriter, and professional tarot reader — to explore how place, family, and parts work can shape a creative and magical life. We wander through Alaska’s quiet woods and loud storms, talk nervous systems and city overload, and laugh about moose logic wh...

Message the show & share your thoughts! What happens when the tower that has confined you for decades finally falls? Artist Chantal de Felice spent twenty years as the primary caregiver for her mother who struggled with mental illness. When her mother passed in 2020, Chantal found herself suddenly free – and completely unprepared for that freedom. This conversation explores what happens when w...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I talk with Arianna Smith, a licensed therapist, copywriter, and Tarot reader who helps therapists, spiritual seekers, and healers tap into their intuition and reclaim their power, both in life and in business. Arianna incorporates EMDR, human design, internal family systems, and intuitive development into her work supporting clients, wh...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I pull cards for a community member's quandaries and questions.  This seeker writes that they SEE the cards sitting there across the room, but can't bring themselves to reach for the deck, shuffle it up, and commune with the magic. The drudgery of work is draining their energy, when all they want is a life "dripping with w...

Message the show & share your thoughts! ✨ If you're finding this in June... CHECK OUT THE SUMMER SYNERGY SPECTACULAR — to support and celebrate 8 years of Typewriter Tarot! ✨ In this episode, I share five key insights about the impact of academia on our creativity, particularly within fine arts graduate programs. I attended one myself — a LOOONNNNG time ago — but I've also worked w...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I dive into the HUGE topic of Capitalism and how it impacts our Creativity. I share 5 BIG THINGS I see within this tense relationship between the two, and what that often means for us as Creative Spirits.  Let's explore... how Capitalism infiltrates our thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and the way that we create — often without us ev...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, we explore The Tower (no one's favorite card to receive!). The Tower is a card that can shake things up, to put it mildly, and bring about great change.  My guest is rather familiar with The Tower's energy and impact, and shares about their personal experiences with this card as we explore this archetype of disruption, awakenin...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I talk about one of the foundational beliefs of my work — that creativity is an energy, not a personality trait, nor an exclusively human feature.  I explain 5 elements, aspects, or implications of this belief and what it means for us as creatively inclined humans. I'm curious to know... does this resonate for you? Does it change th...

Message the show & share your thoughts! This is a follow-up on a previous episode (Using Tarot to Make Decisions — Part 1), where I talked about how I used Tarot as part of my process for making a big decision.  I ended that episode giving y'all the impression that I'd gone with the option that appeared to be "less glorious," and a little softer. But after sharing that epis...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I talk with artist and illustrator Kevin Jay Stanton, creator of the Botanica Tarot, a deck comprised of 78 gorgeous paintings depicting a different plant for each archetype. Kevin's work on this deck included extensive research into the natural history, cultural associations, and mythologies associated with each plant, and these ar...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode exploring The Devil card, I talk with Khadi (Khadijat) Oluwatoyin, founder and director of Sober Black Girls Club, an organization that offers  support and community for Black women, femmes, and nonbinary folks who are practicing or exploring sobriety.  Both Khadi and I share lived experience with alcohol addiction, a dynamic perfectly en...

Message the show & share your thoughts! Recorded on an auspicious Martin Luther King Day that coincides with the inauguration of a new and former extremist US president... in the wake of the LA wildfires and the acceleration of climate collapse writ large, we turn to the novels of Octavia E. Butler, the groundbreaking Black feminist sci-fi writer whose work is rooted in the aspirations, truth-...

Message the show & share your thoughts! It's the year of The Hermit (because 2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9, The Hermit's number). And it's sure to be a wild year all around — politically, environmentally, technologically. So, what wisdom does The Hermit have to offer us as we head into the unknown? In this episode, I share three key themes from the Hermit workshop I hosted last week in the...

Message the show & share your thoughts! In this episode, I share how I recently used Tarot to help me make a decision that felt risky and challenging, and how I fell into a hierarchical paradigm with the cards... but discovered later there was more nuance to what the cards offered (like always!!!).  I use this story to share some thoughts about why we might consult the cards when we face big c...

Message the show & share your thoughts! To explore the Temperance card, I connected with Natalie Ross, a trauma-informed marketing coach and the creator of one of my favorite podcasts, the now-retired-but-still-available "Earth Speak," which aired from 2016 to 2023. In this episode, Natalie and I dork out about the art on both the Smith-Waite and the Gentle Tarot decks, analyzing the...

Message the show & share your thoughts! For an exploration of The Hanged One, I had to talk to Amelia Hruby, creator and host of the podcast Off the Grid, a show for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. These days, the prevailing logic is that ANY and EVERY successful business MUST have an Instagram account. But Amelia's made it her missio...

Message the show & share your thoughts! I've deferred The Hanged One episode briefly (it would normally appear here), because this conversation on the Death card unexpectedly took on much bigger dimensions in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated huge areas of Western North Carolina less than two weeks ago. My guest for this episode is Mara June — death doula, grie...

Message the show & share your thoughts! For the Justice card, I HAD TO talk to Maria Minnis, the liberatory Tarot goddess and author of Tarot for the Hard Work: An Archetypal Journey to Confront Racism and Imagine Collective Healing,  Maria's book, which came out early this year (2023), explores each Tarot archetype within the Major Arcana through the lens of social justice work, offering...