Incandescent Tarot Podcast

This reading surprised me when I turned over the cards. After a period of (relative) calm in our readings with no majors in sight, May brings us two powerful archetypes to work with: the deeply transformative path of Death and the placid surrender of The Hanged Man. If you’ve been feeling a change building, this month is when it comes into focus - perhaps in a glaring way that has us instincitively shrinking away from the spotlight - and require us to keep going, dare to openly celebrate and continue what’s working well and rapidly, and to also balance all the fire and movement with wise practical decisions in our everyday lives. Listen in and see how these cards might shape your May.
Episode Description
We’re moving out of April’s grounded, contemplative Pentacles landscape and into something much more immediate and alive.
Last month asked us to tend, to wait, and to notice what emerges when we don’t rush. And now, suddenly things are happening.
May brings a rapid shift from possibility into reality. The Six of Wands signals momentum and visible success, while Death reveals the deeper transformation fueling it all. The Hanged Man introduces a tension between movement and retreat, and the Four of Pentacles offers a grounded way to navigate the intensity.
This is a powerful and slightly surreal month. May asks us to accept what is working, trust the depth of change unfolding beneath it, and move forward without abandoning our center.
Our Cards
Theme: Six of Wands
Things are moving—and fast!
What was contemplative in April now becomes real. The Six of Wands brings visibility, success, and a sense of arrival that may feel sudden or even surprising.
This is the moment where ideas take shape and results begin to show. Let yourself be seen, supported, and celebrated. You’ve done more preparation than you think and the feedback isn’t just kindness.
Environment: Death
Beneath the external successes of the month lies a larger path of profound transformation.
Death reveals that what’s unfolding externally is rooted in something much deeper. A cycle is ending, a new facet of ourselves is emerging, and the shift is both inevitable and meaningful.
It’ll be feel intense AND aligned. Make room for all the feelings and keep going, paying attention to your instincts and intuition.
Challenge: The Hanged Man
Amidst all this internal and external movement, a part of us wants to shrink back and hide behind a facade of “wise caution.” This moment, however, calls for us to show up and participate. It’s not the time to turn back, look for perfection, or get abstract when things get real.
Opportunity: Four of Pentacles
Stay grounded, keep it simple, and maybe avoid big financial moves or radical changes in your everyday life!
The Four of Pentacles offers a stabilizing path through the intensity of the month. This is about tending to your resources - energy, time, money, and attention - with clarity and care.
Key Themes for May 2026
Rapid movement and visible results
External success rooted in deeper transformation
Learning to receive recognition without minimizing it
Navigating the tension between action and retreat
Grounding through daily ritual and routine, the senses, and a practice of enoughness
Sustaining yourself through change rather than overextending
🎡 Wheel of Fortune Context
May marks a clear shift out of the Minor Arcana lull of March and April. Major Arcana energy is back!
The Wheel has started to spin faster, calling on our endurance and trust in larger patterns. What was quietly building over the past few months is now becoming visible, tangible, and undeniable. Buckle up!


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In Episode 4 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, moving through the aces of the Minor Arcana.
Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with their energy over time: through art-making, daily life, season, and conversation.
This month’s focus: The Ace of Cups
In this episode, Anna and Gina discuss:
* Water as a fluid, transformative element that dissolves the hardness of Swords and Wands into something tender and ineffable
* The shadow side of Cups: beneath the softness, what is sinister, soporific, and hidden
* The Grail legend as tarot mirror: the holy fool, purity of heart, and the quest for impossible wholeness
* How the five streams in the card’s imagery connect to the senses and the facets of being alive
* The upside-down M on the chalice and its possible allusion to the Virgin Mary
* Rachel Pollack’s framing of the Ace of Cups as “an emblem of love underpinning life”
* Psychedelics, blue lotus, and states of perception beyond language
* The Cocteau Twins as the ultimate Cups band
* Gina’s March forecast and how the Eight of Cups, Ten of Cups, and Six of Wands illuminate the art of following the flow
* Anna’s illustration process: gray skies, a sun-sized wafer, and a Medieval-style border
* A preview of the Ace of Pentacles and the turn toward earth
The conversation moves freely between the mystical and the grounded — from Arthurian legend and Gnostic Christianity to perfume and Pokémon. The Ace of Cups emerges the place where the full spectrum of emotional life gathers: seeking, melancholy, beauty, and the underlying unity beneath it all.
References & Influences
The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Elaine Pagels and the Gnostic Gospels
The Cocteau Twins
Ace of Cups Moodboard
Scents & Sensory Correspondences
Ace of Cups
Fragrance
Gina’s Pick
Parfum de Thérèse by Frédéric Malle — created by Edmond Roudnitska in the late 1950s for his wife, who wore it exclusively until Frédéric Malle later brought it to market. Notes of melon, green violet, and moss that together evoke a secret shaded pool with water lilies — romantic, melancholy, and quietly watery.
Anna’s Pick
Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès — light, aquatic, luminous. Anna’s mother’s signature fragrance.
Natural Material
Still water and lily pads
Rain on a gray afternoon
Violets
Blue lotus (flagged for future Cups exploration)
Environment
A shaded garden pool, secret and still
Clouds heavy before rain
The surface of things — and what moves beneath
About the Hosts
Gina Wisotzky The founder of Incandescent Tarot, Gina has been reading and practicing tarot and the intuitive arts for over two decades. Her work weaves tarot, writing, seasonal practice, and somatic inquiry through readings, classes, and audio reflections.
Incandescent Tarot / Alchemag
Anna Rose Stabler Anna Rose Stabler is an illustrator whose work centers symbolism, still life, and narrative imagery. Her practice explores how meaning forms through visual language, material, and seasonality.
Website / Instagram / Tumblr


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit incandescenttarot.substack.com

Episode Description
We’re coming back down to earth in April after practicing honesty and clarity with the King of Swords in March. This month brings us fully back into the body, the home, and the material world, while giving us a new perspective from which we can plan our next steps.
With a strong two pentacles at the center of its reading, April emphasizes stewardship, presence, and participation in daily life. The Queen of Pentacles leads us into a space of care and attentiveness, while the Ten of Pentacles reflects a rich, busy, and interconnected environment. The Nine of Swords challenges us to notice old patterns of retreat or overwhelm, and the Two of Wands opens a quiet but exciting space for creative dreaming.
This is a full and fertile month: April asks us to tend what is already here, trust the stability we’ve built, and allow new visions to emerge without rushing to act on them.
Our Cards

Theme: Queen of Pentacles
April is rooted in care, presence, and grounded stewardship. After March’s King of Swords clarity, we now come into the body and the senses. This is a month of tending: to your home, your relationships, your environment, and yourself.
Rather than speaking or analyzing, the Queen of Pentacles asks: how are you showing up? How are you creating a space where you and your community can feel supported?
There is a quiet confidence here, so trust that you know how to care for what matters.
Environment: Ten of Pentacles
Life is rich and full!
The Ten of Pentacles reflects a world of many moving parts—people, responsibilities, relationships, obligations, and opportunities. It can feel like a lot, but it is also a sign of abundance and interconnectedness. It just might make you feel a little dizzy.
This is not a spacious month externally, but internally, you are being asked to cultivate steadiness. Notice just how capable you’ve become in navigating complexity.
Challenge: Nine of Swords
Old patterns of worry, overwhelm, or retreat may resurface.
The Nine of Swords suggests that moments of busyness or abundance could trigger familiar emotional responses such as rumination, anxiety, or the urge to withdraw. Yet this card feels slightly out of step with the rest of the spread, hinting that these reactions may be echoes rather than current truths.
Where might you be defaulting to old coping mechanisms that no longer fit?
Opportunity: Two of Wands
A gentle and exciting opening.
The Two of Wands invites you to dream, explore, and imagine what’s next without pressure. This is not a month for major action or overhaul. It is a time for curiosity, possibility, and low-stakes creativity.
Let yourself expand your vision. What if the best thing could happen?
Key Themes for April 2026
* Grounding into the body and daily life
* Stewardship of home, resources, and relationships
* Navigating abundance and busyness with presence
* Recognizing and releasing outdated emotional patterns
* Making space for creative dreaming without urgency
* Finding stability within complexity
🎡 Wheel of Fortune Context
April continues the grounded phase we entered in March, with no Major Arcana cards present!
This suggests a sustained period of integration where the dramatic shifts of earlier months are being metabolized into daily life. The Wheel is still turning, but now through routine, responsibility, and embodied presence.
This is a time to build, tend, and stabilize while quietly sensing what may be emerging next.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit incandescenttarot.substack.com

Recorded on the waxing crescent in Pisces and released on the vernal equinox, this first episode of Elemental Explorations arrives at a threshold as the light just begins its return.
In this conversation, Gina Wisotzky (Incandescent Tarot) and Bethany Carder (My Resonant Frequencies) weave together tarot, astronomical astrology, and somatic practice to explore what it means to live as a water body: porous, rhythmic, and in relationship with the earth. An expansive practice and attunement, this recording invites you to take in at your own pace and return as needed.
Moving through the vernal equinox with the Sun and Moon in Pisces, we enter through the water body—attuning to the Moon and the wider Piscean field through sound, listening, and embodied exploration. An impromptu conversation about the Moon in its waxing crescent phase in Pisces, this episode weaves astronomical astrology and tarot into a reflection on emergence, sensitivity, and the living rhythm of the sky. Attuned to this moment within the lunar cycle, this offering follows the natural cadence of return, where with each phase we are given another chance to listen, reflect, and notice what this exploration is teaching us
What we explore together:
We open with the lunar moment itself — waxing crescent, just past new moon, the slow build before illumination. Bethany brings her six-year practice of attuning to planetary transits through sound and improvisation, arriving through health challenges and the discovery that lunar tracking was a way back into the body. Gina shares her own path to the moon: growing up in the countryside under a full-moon snowstorm, sending Lunar Dispatch voice memos with a long-distance partner, and now wanting something more formally somatic in her spiritual practice.
From there, the conversation moves through the full arc of the Moon card in tarot: shadow, siren call, the High Priestess as creature of margins, the intoxication of going too deep, and the necessity of bringing what you find back into the light. We talk about the Moon’s relationship to nervous system regulation, the 10 of Wands as a personal nemesis, the Nine of Swords as an honest mirror, and what it means to birth yourself through the moon.
Along the way, Bethany leads a grounding breath and embodiment practice, a full-body movement sequence mapped to the lunar cycle, and closes the episode with Pauline Oliveros-inspired deep listening - a water meditation followed by a slow, guided return. We close with an affirmation from Bethany’s teacher Krishna Kaur: I am the center of my world.
To see tarot spreads, visit the project website elementalexplorations.com
Cards pulled:
Seven of Pentacles · Seven of Wands · The World · Five of Wands · Knight of Cups
Practices included:
Belly breathing (4 in, 6 out) · Sounding for nervous system regulation · Lunar cycle movement sequence · Deep listening with water field recordings · Affirmation call and response
Resources:
Freesound — for sharing and exploring water field recordings from your own place
Cities and Memory — a global project of shared listening
About the Project:
Elemental Explorations is a collaborative audio and attunement series rooted in the seasons. With each equinox and solstice, we follow one element — through conversation, sound, movement, tarot, and somatic practice — as an invitation to come back into relationship with the living world and with yourself.
The Elemental Explorations Ecosystem:
www.elementalexplorations.com
myresonantfrequencies.substack.com
incandescenttarot.com
incandescenttarot.beehiiv.com



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit incandescenttarot.substack.com

In Episode 3 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, beginning in the Minor Arcana and moving slowly through the suits.
Instead of defining cards through fixed meanings, this project explores what happens when you live with their energy over time: through art-making, daily life, the seasons, personal practice, and conversation.
This month’s focus is the The Ace of Swords
In this episode, Anna and Gina discuss:
Why the sword suit contains some of the most dramatic imagery in tarot
The Ace as the brightness of the swords suit before its darker expressions appear
The relationship between thought, communication, and conceptual clarity
The iconic Rider–Waite imagery and symbolism: crown, mountains, and descending yods
The theatrical, almost comic, some might say emo, intensity of sword imagery (including the famous Three of Swords heart)
Anna’s artistic process designing a new Ace of Swords card
Wavy swords vs. straight, the abundance and drama of sqash vines, crowns as hierarchy and violence
Rhapsodizing about dendrites
The air element, the season of spring, and the mental landscape of the sword suit
Barren mountains as symbolic terrain for clarity and danger
Throughout the episode, the Ace of Swords emerges as both tool and threshold - a moment where ideas become clear and insight begins to form, hopefully in a potent, spiritually-informed direction!
Scents & Sensory Correspondences
Fragrance
L'Air du Desert Marocain by Tauer Perfumes
Vol de Nuit by Guerlain
Earthscence Incesnse by Fragile Glass
Natural Material
Galbanum
Pine, Fir, evergreens
Bracing citrus
Eucalyptus
Menthol
Metal
Environment
Rocky mountains
Evergreen forests
The desert at night
About the Hosts
Gina WisotzkyThe founder of Incandescent Tarot, Gina has been reading and practicing tarot and the intuitve arts for over two decades. Her work weaves tarot, writing, seasonal practice, and somatic inquiry through readings, classes, and audio reflections.
Incandescent Tarot/Alchemag
Anna Rose StablerAnna Rose Stabler is an illustrator whose work centers symbolism, still life, and narrative imagery. Her practice explores how meaning forms through visual language, material, and seasonality.
Website/Podcast/Tumblr


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit incandescenttarot.substack.com