What Tending Spirit Means and Why it Requires Us to Re-member Our Magic (plus 50 suggestions for how!)
The Meaning of Tending Spirit
Tending Spirit, is the fourth Key Channel of Change in the Full & Plenty Joy Life Spiral, if you are going in a linear fashion. It appears after Freeing Expression and before Aligning Dreams. It is across from the Breaking Cycles Key Channel, and as such, has a symbiotic relationship with the lessons learned there. In many ways, it is a necessary resource and balance, what we must keep coming back to if we are to break cycles, and definitely if we are to align our dreams.
We see this reflected in so many aspects of society. From 12 Step programs to Yoga classes to Weekly Horoscope Podcasts and Dance Jams. Tending Spirit is tending to our souls and the spirits we come from who helped us be here. It is about going inward, so we can shine outward. It is about Accessible Joy and Re-membering our Magic.
It is a season of life characterized by putting the puzzle pieces back together like a detective about the truth of the magic you are descended from. For example, my mother was a ballerina and my father was a drummer. My ability to express myself through dance and music is part of re-membering my magic. Learning about my Great Uncle who became a socialist after WWII and rejected his inheritance is a part of re-membering my magic as an Advocate. And further and further and further back, so far back, that Tending Spirit becomes an intuitive practice affirming your own magical rituals and practices and beliefs that unconsciously source from The Ancients.
It is about learning to be in awe of the magic that surrounds us each and every day all around by using the resources gained in Breaking Cycles, Becoming Embodied and Freeing Expression to ultimately allow your unique magic and spirit and JOY to come through as a resource. A Queen of Wands journey, if I may.
It is a sacred liminal space for touching into the unseen and allowing its loving support back. There are messages for us from beyond that want to help us expand into Aligning Dreams. The Question is will we get quiet enough to hear them? Feel them? And brave enough to trust them? Affirm them?
Tending Spirit is where we stop gaslighting our inner children who have always known the way of magic in the world, and begin taking them quite seriously. We no longer skip over or hold "disbelief" in this aspect of our Being. We learn our Spirits are real and need tending to like everything else.
Associated Symbols and Archetypes
Use the information below to intuitively inspire new connections (deeper understanding) about what season of life you're in right now.
Element: Spirit
Season: Fall + Winter
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Astrological Sign: Scorpio and Sagittarius
Astrological Houses: 8th, 9th, 12th
Planets: Pluto, Neptune, Vesta (asteroid)
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Tarot Spiral: Rebirth Spiral
Tarot Major Arcana: Moon, Sun, Judgement, World, and a little flavor of Magician
Tarot Suite: The Court Cards and the Cups
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Social Change Ecosystem Roles: Healers, Visionaries, Guides, Storytellers
5 C's in Action: Be Courageous enough to consider there is more to our world, life and human body than what we can touch or intellectually understand. Be Curious enough to research reoccurring symbols or signs in your life like animals you see or plants you come across. Be Conscious of the earth systems that you can align more with like the stars, and moon and sun and seasons. Be Compassionate towards your Fight Protector Part that likely minimizes magic and gaslights you into thinking it's not real and has no power or meaning. Be Committed to discovering your own unique magic instead of seeking to make your practice identical to someone else's.
Mind-Body-Spirit System in Action: Learn about ancestry, spirituality, religion, astrology, tarot - all the esoteric meaning making systems out there that could benefit you and reconnect you to who you are and where you come from (Mind of Spirit); Actually practice your magic, your rituals, your spells, your whatever you call them. DO the magic making and be with Spirit (Spirit of Spirit). Take what you've learned and bring it into the space of community. Learn how to commune with spirit with others. You are building the new world now (System of Spirit).
Mantra: I trust I am never alone and divinely guided to Truth and Love.
Why it requires us to re-member our magic:
Most simply, because our magic is the fluid of our soul, our spirit. If we are tend our spirits then we must tend our magic. Just like how when we are resourcing ourselves like getting calm, cool and collected with some breathwork. We are tending the breath, one of the fluids of our bodies though “invisible”. We do this with the magic of our spirit too.
Your magic is what makes you uniquely you. Who you are, where you come from and why you are here in this unique body, in the unique family you were born into, on the unique land they occupied, and all the generations of lived experience packaged as cellular memories living inside you right this very second.
This is why Becoming Embodied comes before Tending Spirit in the FPJ Life Spiral. Because there is so much of our magic, our soul, our beingness in our body and through it and because of it. It is a far greater resource than even our labor intensive capitalist society can imagine. In fact, if they could imagine it, then they would really rethink this whole Capitalism thing.
They’d re-member there’s another way.
Like my Gaelic Highlander ancestors before losing the Battle of Culloden to the British who then went onto enact what is today deemed a cultural genocide. Before that horrific time period in the 1700s, my people lived as a collectivist society known as the clan system. My last name, McIntyre, is one of those Highland Clans. My last name was one of the first clues I used to bring me closer to who I am and where I come from. It’s also informed why I am here today - my contribution, because McIntyre means Craftsmen. So today I craft new frameworks of understanding to help humans heal.
This is all an example of Tending Spirit. How I re-membered my magic by following the ancestral breadcrumbs into many missing pieces I have been re-integrating into my Beingness - my magic, my soul, who I am and where I come from and why I am here.
The answers lie in the past, present and stars. Literally, astrology is a great Tending Spirit practice that helps us re-member our magic. One of my favorite astrologers, Chani Nicholas, literally has a book called “You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance,” which says it all.
When I set my 10 New Moon wishes with the help of Jan Spiller’s “New Moon Astrology: The secrets of astrological timing to make all your dreams come true” I am Tending my Spirit. It help me come back into contact with my desires for change and expansion.
Ultimately, Tending Spirit and Re-membering Magic helps us to expand our capacity for The Unknown, which is frankly what we are here to do as humans. Realize our locus of control and operate from that place and strengthen ourselves from the inside out on all levels in order to flow along with the massive oceanic waves of being alive in this universe at this particular time.
When we come back into contact with our spirit and re-member the truth of our magic, who we are, where we come from and why we are here, we often come to the realization that actually we are unconditionally loved all the time and that love can be accessed through the body at any given moment.
Through this, we re-member Our Power. This then allows us to Align our Dreams. Tending Spirit provides a portal to the felt experience of Oneness. This sense of Oneness is the necessary soil for collective transformation.
50 Ways to Re-member Your Magic and Tend your Spirit:
Take more salt baths than you normally would allow yourself
Visit your nature sanctuaries and leave an offering
Sit by the nearest tree to your abode for 15 full minutes just BEING
Go on a walk listen to a playlist and imagine yourself performing
Go on a walk and take pictures of the magic you see around you
Google search down an ancestral research wormhole into topics like…
What lands are your people from?
How did your people end up where they are today?
What did your people do around this time of the year?
What does your last name mean and come from?
What does your first name mean and come from?
Write letters
Write thank you notes
Send a digital seasons greetings card
Get a Year Ahead card reading
Get an astrology reading
Tend an ancestor altar in the morning by sharing some of your coffee and breakfast
Attend a New Moon/Full Moon group ceremony
Write up to 10 Wishes at the New Moon
Write up to 10 resentments, fears, “mistakes”, negative beliefs to burn at the Full Moon
Wrap your body up in as many soft fluffy layers as possible while gazing out the window
Hide your phone away on off mode for 6 hours to 2 days
Pull tarot or oracle cards
Turn a wall in your abode into an Vision Wall
Vacuum
Do your skincare routine
Make a playlist honoring a beloved dead
Write a goodbye letter to a certain person or place that you put on your altar
Tend a literal fire
Craft something
Sing songs from your childhood
Watch old movies
Try stream-of-consciousness-writing
Try ancestral channeling writing
Make candles
Decorate a Yule Tree or Yule Log
Bake a favorite cookie recipe
Go into the city for a show and get dressed up
Read purely for pleasure
Attend or organize a grief circle
Offer a service pro-bono to someone in need
Get bodywork done
Get a large piece of writing pad and allow any downloads to come thru onto it
Smoke your herb of choice on the porch at night under the stars
Pray and build an altar to specific deity
Pray and build an altar to a specific planet
Pray and build an altar to your inner child
Pray and build an altar for Collective Healing
Pray and build an altar for Collective Liberation
Whatever it is, make sure it’s tending to you on a deep soul level.
Usually to reach that level of depth, our nervous system needs to be in “rest & digest” mode.
Which means doing less, moving slower and trusting you are right where you need to be.
If you need help with doing this, check out my free series on somatic practices to relieve anxiety.
For more guidance with Tending Spirit, book a FPJ Spiral Reading with Solasta Lucky McIntyre.
