August 2025 Spread Reading

Spread Intention: Receiving what is given by shifting from resistance to allowing.

Individuation* Focus: Releasing control and embracing receptivity as a leadership act of trust and alignment.

*Individuation is the process of integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the self to achieve wholeness and authenticity.

Tarot Deck: Spiritsong Tarot by Paulina Cassidy

How this spread supports Individuation: Many leaders struggle with receiving. This spread reveals where you unconsciously block generosity and teaches you how allowing is a powerful act of individuation and self-trust. This spread helps leaders shift from “pushing” to receiving.

The Card Draw

Where am I resisting what life is offering me?

Card 1: Where am I resisting what life is offering me?

The Hermit (Upright)
Keywords: Contemplation, Wisdom
Tarotypal Insight:
The Hermit archetype asks you to withdraw—not to escape, but to attune. Resistance is surfacing not because of fear or ego, but because life is inviting you to pause. Your leadership mind may crave action, clarity, and outward validation, but The Hermit calls you to inner clarity, to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. This resistance might not be loud or dramatic. It may show up in subtle refusals: ignoring your body's cues, bypassing stillness, or skipping necessary solitude in favor of productivity.

Individuation Guidance:
You are being asked to trust the fertile void. The place of resistance may be your reluctance to fully retreat from external noise or seek answers through internal attunement. Individuation requires a return to the self as source. What if the offering is silence? Stillness? Invisibility? Your resistance may be to not being needed. Let yourself rest in sacred aloneness. That's where the deeper receiving begins.

Leadership Application:
Are you resisting mentorship—perhaps from yourself? Are you over-functioning in visibility, when your wisdom actually deepens through strategic withdrawal? This card invites you to resist the urge to solve and instead contemplate, sense, and be with what is. Wisdom arrives in the still space you create.

Card 2: How can I cultivate trust in the flow of receiving?

Six of Feathers (Swords) – Reversed
Keywords: Transition, Insight (Reversed)
Tarotypal Insight:
Traditionally, this card speaks to leaving behind troubled waters—of crossing into calmer internal territory. In reversal, it suggests a fear or refusal to leave something familiar, even when it no longer serves you. There’s a spiritual or emotional migration you’re meant to make, but you may be clinging to roles, identities, or expectations that are outdated.

Individuation Guidance:
Receiving becomes difficult when you’re tethered to old narratives. Perhaps there's a part of you that believes "I have to carry it all," or "Only I can do this right." This reversal reveals a subconscious pattern of trying to control the transition—wanting to be both ferryman and passenger. But true receiving requires surrender. Trusting the flow means releasing the need to manage the current. You don't need to earn the grace that's coming.

Leadership Application:
You may be trying to bring old thinking into a new context. This is a cue to re-examine where you’re leading from outdated maps—especially mental constructs. It’s time to let new insight carry you across. What might shift if you let your team, your body, or spirit do some of the steering?

Card 3: What shifts when I allow myself to fully receive?

Two of Feathers (Swords) – Reversed
Keywords: Decisions, Direction (Reversed)
Tarotypal Insight:
In reversal, the Two of Feathers speaks to an inner standoff—a tug-of-war between mind and heart, logic and intuition. When you finally allow yourself to receive, the internal gridlock loosens. But first, you must stop trying to "figure it out" and let the answer reveal itself.

Individuation Guidance:
Receiving is not passive—it’s an active surrender. When you open, you dissolve the binary ("Should I do this or that?") and start to live into the paradox ("Both/and may be possible. Or neither. Or something unexpected."). Allowing cracks the door for insight to arrive through non-logical channels—symbol, sensation, spirit. This shift lets you hear your inner compass again.

Leadership Application:
Leadership decisions often default to the rational. But deeper leadership requires an inner alignment that’s felt, not forced. When you fully receive, you release the pressure to choose prematurely. You gain access to guidance that comes not from analysis, but from embodiment and clarity. You stop reacting and start sensing into right timing.

Key Themes for Individuation

• The Fear of Receiving: Often masked as productivity, control, or even “service,” this fear can prevent you from entering into deeper rhythms of trust.

• Wisdom in the Pause: The Hermit reminds us that leadership maturity is born in spaces without applause, strategy, or speed.

• Crossing the Inner Bridge: Both reversed swords cards suggest resistance to internal transition. The mind wants clarity, but the soul wants surrender.

• Paradox as Portal: True receiving dissolves duality and opens leaders to truths that cannot be accessed through logic alone.

Suggested Leadership Experiment

Practice: “The Inner Yes” Check-In

1. Each morning this week, place a hand on your heart and ask: “Where is life already offering me something today?”

2. Instead of acting, listen. Notice any resistance—tension, disbelief, a need to justify.

3. For one full day, commit to receiving without explanation. Accept a compliment. Say yes to help. Let silence be enough.

4. Journal what came up—ease, discomfort, delight. How did your leadership energy shift?