Centered Q&A Episodes 37 & 38

Ugh, I forgot to post my November Earth Medicine + Tarot reading. For the month of November, we are working with the Eight of Swords, Salmon medicine, Thyme and the Crystals: Labradorite, Larimar + Sunstone. We deal with Mars Retrograde and a Lunar Eclipse…holy crap!

Episode 38 answers some questions from our listeners Tarot, Stage Cards, Moon phase work + Retrogrades. Here they are:

  1. Suzanne asked, “Is there a card/s that is always a little difficult to interpret when it comes up in a reading? Conversely is there one or multiple that are easier? 🔮😻”

  2. Tan Hm asked, “Stage cards confuse me! And it would be amazing if you could talk about how to integrate after shadow work.”

  3. Danielle asked, “Phases- from the moon phases and the spiritual meanings, to the spiritual phases (waves) most of us experience in life…. Planet retrogrades and the different impacts depending on the sign if occurs in.”

  4. Suzanne asked, “I know this info is probably somewhere but can you talk a little bit about what "retrograde" means. You can always send a question to angie@themoonandstone.com for me to cover in an upcoming episode or record one on my anchor page at https://anchor.fm/angie-yingst/message


all about me, again.

Today’s episode is a little bit different. I am answering some person questions asked by my listeners and followers. Most of them are about my life as a healer and teacher. Listen, I love answering questions about my research and work and where I get to go down rabbit holes, but the personal ones can be different and difficult. Not difficult, but just putting yourself out there can feel vulnerable.

So, here I am answering some questions, and I would love to have a regular monthly episode answering questions from you. If you want to ask me some research questions or questions about healing just know that 1. Or a love doing research, 2 or b. am dedicated to teaching and furthering people’s spiritual journey 3. Or c. I strive to be mindful that not everyone knows all these words and phrases and concepts that me and my other spiritual woo woo people take for granted. If you have an question, you can send it to me at angie@themoonandstone or goto my anchor.fm Centered portal and you can record a question for a future episode. Thanks and I hope you enjoy this episode of Centered.

understanding the medicine, even when it is disturbing

Friends, this is an essay I wrote a few years ago on my newsletter. I thought I would revisit it on my podcast and blog today as it ties in with the Deer Medicine of this month’s Guided Shamanic Journey. If you are interested in receiving my readings at the Full Moon and/or New Moon, which are collectively pulled, but surprisingly personal, or if you are interested in received an audio guided shamanic journey with an animal each month, which goes in depth with the medicine of the animal, then has a 15-30 minute guided shamanic journey, I can read more in-depth about it under the membership section of my website: MEMBERSHIPS. Several of my journeys are available on my website, and I am working on getting them all up there with three years of guided shamanic journeys for my memberships, which have so many amazing journey including frog, horse, butterfly, bee, beetle, whale, vulture, panther, great blue heron, fox, cougar and more.

On the way to one of my mentoring circle, one of my students hit a deer. She was devastated. The deer most certainly will die, or already had died. She asked me, “What does this mean?” As a circle keeper and an earth medicine walker, I found myself stumbling over my words. Why does this happen to us who walk an earth medicine path? Others chimed in with their thoughts—the deer knew you could hold space for its transition; it was destined to die; better you than someone else.

A few years ago, after a circle, I was driving home. I live in the boonies, as we say, out in the sticks, where I worry about hitting deer. Pennsylvania ranks as the second most deer collisions in the country. So, I drive slowly, cautiously through the fields, and frequently stop for all kinds of wildlife. But I was still in the city, headed home, and bam, a deer ran into my car. It hit my front quarter panel. I pulled over and the deer laid on the side of the road, panting, clearly injured. I called the police and sent Reiki. I envisioned the Reiki energy repairing the deer’s legs and head, and strengthening it. I did this Reiki for almost 15 minutes, and the deer stood up, steady and whole, then ran right out into the street to get demolished and killed by a massive truck.

The truck tore the deer apart. I shook and cried as well.

What does this mean? Is it still medicine for us if we see our medicine dead on the side of the road? And how do we interpret it?

As I meditated on the death of the deer, I could see this interplay between the deer’s medicine and the encroachment of humanity. The medicine of deer resides in its deep vulnerability. When deer interact with humanness and urban environments, we begin to see just how vulnerable these magnificent creatures are. Humans have disrupted the balance of the predator and the prey. Our ancestors decimated the predators—wolves, mountain lion population, the bears—who would have hunted the sick and weak, keeping populations down. Massive deforestation also affects deer populations. Whitetail deer flourish in edge environments, right where the forest meets the suburbs. Streets and cars encroach on the delicate ecosystems. And hunting is down around the country with the ease of shopping for meat in the supermarket.

So, deer medicine is not only a medicine about the individual deer’s vulnerability to predators but the species. Deer, particularly those with antlers, have a strong connection to Spirit. Their antlers are said to reach high to our guides and angels as antennae for messages. Deer connects with the subtle energy system and has heightened senses from hearing to vision to smell. They are always sensing the disruption in the force.

I could not help thinking as my student told me about the deer and her accident that this was part of the critical message for her. Knowing that she is going through a beautiful spiritual opening, deer medicine can come in this way to remind us of our vulnerability during our spiritual opening. When we experience all this light and love that begins to channel through us from Spirit, we live in a bubble of good vibes. When I started opening, I just was always blissed out and only able to tolerate other lightworkers. When we take all this gentle light and vulnerability into the real world, our first encounters with the sickness of our society, the toxicity and negativity of people, the harshness of the news and the suffering of others, we experience this world just like the deer, hit out of nowhere by real life. This modern world is cruel to the vulnerable. Deer medicine embodies vulnerability, quiet, and gentleness. Nothing is more profoundly indicative of the imbalance then when nature interacts with urban life. Where we see how pollution hurts wildlife, or cars kill deer.

This grounded, counter energy to very high vibrational work is part of the medicine lightworkers need to carry as much as the light message of our power animals. When you open in profound ways, you are, of course, more susceptible to those deep wells of grief and compassion. But it goes deeper. There is nothing natural about carrying vulnerability or being an empath in a narcissistic world. We also have to experience and learn about the shadow medicine of our animals. Shamanic work is not always easy or light or fun. It is mostly about challenging ourselves to go beyond the surface, to experience the more profound message, to become stewards of the Earth, spokespeople for the Mother. When all of this starts, we want to live in that amazing Other World of Spirit. When we practice earth medicine, we become intrinsically tied to Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon, and their incredible cycles. Life and death, happiness and grief, masculine and feminine—this delicate balance becomes second sight to us We can see it without trying. Impermanence and suffering of life and of the human condition is part of our medicine and the spiritual experience. We must hold space for both light and darkness, birth and death. As we begin our opening, this can be a harsh reality.

If this happens to you, or you are driving and notice an animal sacred to you, dead on the side of the road, my suggestion is to begin asking what is the medicine for you—both in the animal’s living experience (how does it live, love, eat, hunt, raise its young, etc), then as your medicine interacts with the brutality of this world.

If you are able and feel up to it, take the hair or an item from the animal that was killed (always remembering that if it stinks, it will always stink. If it has bugs, your house will have bugs, so only newly killed animals can be harvested, but that is another post) and use it in ceremony. As medicine keepers, we need to honor the medicine and the allies and giving them a good death is part of this process. You can use that medicine you harvested on your altar or in a medicine bundle.

One thing I know is that none of us aim for the deer or squirrel or bird, so release guilt. Guilt is the illusion of control (if I did something different, it would have changed the outcome). Just be with the profound grief. That is enough suffering. Create a ritual of honoring the medicine of the deer. Sit in the discomfort of your humanness and the ways in which we can mitigate the harshness of our living on the earth. Allow the tears their flow. Fall into ritual and ceremony.

Remember anything, all of our human experience, can become our medicine. To ignore the death, suffering, and violence inherent in our animal medicine is to ignore the full power of its medicine. May you walk gently on the Earth, friends.