[šš° Offering] Learning to Love Our Anxieties
Happy Rabbit Year! It's our one (lunar) year anniversary! Celebrate with us with a guided reflection and chat session with Director of Magic Dorothy R. Santos.
This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We are currently between seasons. You can catch up on Apple, Spotify, Google and Instagram.
Join Director of Magic Dorothy R. Santos for a Substack chat on this topic with our community starting on Monday, January 23.
Happy one (lunar) year anniversary to us!
This time last year, as we entered the Year of the Tiger, we published our very first issue of Five and Nine. Like the proverbial Fool of tarot, we didnāt quite know what we were getting into, but we figured it would be interesting. āIt might seem strange to combine magic, work and economic justice,ā we wrote, ābut itās the Year of the Tiger, after all, a time for bold moves and big decisionsāor maybe a much-needed cat nap.ā
Fortunately, we got a bit of both this past year. We launched our first episode, where we did a tarot reading for ourselves and introduced this project. And we then proceeded to publish 14 more episodes, and weāve received some great feedback on Apple Podcasts. We ran a tarot workshop at Unfinished Live in New York, where we did a series of live readings on stage with attendeesā custom tarot cards. We launched our paid subscriptions (thank you, paid subscribers!). And now weāre getting ready to run our very first tarot class. Weāre the little indie project that could, and we couldnāt be more proud of the community weāve built through this work.
And the best part is that weāre soon entering Season 3, which is all about the theme of Rest. It seems like rest is on the mind at the beginning of this year, from the four day work week to unions pushing for more sustainable workplaces. But rest needs to be coupled with sustainability and security, and waves of layoffs, inflation, and unequal access to healthcare all point to the structural barriers in society that make it hard to feel comfortable with rest.
In the wise words of Tricia Hersey, author of the bestselling book Rest is Resistance and founder of the Nap Ministry, rest is something weāre taught to neglect from an early age:
I call my daydreaming brain love. This Ministry uplifts daydreaming as one of the many forms of rest. A form of rest that can be accessed at any time. A mini-nap. As a child, many of us were punished for daydreaming while in classrooms. The teachers, trained under grind culture, assumed daydreaming was a student not paying attention. We slowly learn our time to imagine and download new information is wrong and not a part of learning. We begin the lifelong process of disconnecting from our bodies and learn to ignore the subtle and bold ways that our bodies and spirits are communicating with us constantly.
What does rest mean to you? Where does rest reside? In this issue, we have a journaling and reflection exercise along with more information about our new Tarot for Writers class. And Director of Magic Dorothy R. Santos will be leading a Substack chat on this topic with our community starting on Monday, January 23.
Hope you all have a restful hop-hop-hop into the new year, and weāll be back to the podcast with the next full moon (February 5)!
šš What is the Rabbit Year? šš
A reflection by Five and Nine Director of Magic Dorothy R. Santos1
āThroughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where you might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble.āĀ
ā Dr. Harriet Lerner
It has been relatively sunny for the past couple of days in the Bay Area after the torrential rain from the atmospheric river that has found its way along the west coast. Sadly, in parts of Santa Cruz county, residentsā homes have been submerged by the downpour and many people left without power or access to electricity.
I havenāt been able to visit Santa Cruz for weeks since I was extremely sick in December and trying to tie up loose ends to start the new year. Yesterday, I decided to pay a visit to the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden. As a grad student, I felt ashamed that I had never visited this lovely and serene place until this past week.
The rain brought much nourishment to the trees, plants, and flowers as opposed to any visible damage. Itās as if the garden wanted to soak up all of the rain. From the California Flannel Bush to the Winter Red Conebush, many of the plants and flowers felt alive and thriving. Each seemed to be a gentle reminder that you canāt stop life from growing and thriving despite devastation and loss.Ā
Walking through the garden, I stopped to admire small brown bunnies hopping across the path traversing as quickly as they could between the bushes, trees, and flowers. After letting out an initial squeal, which Iām sure wasnāt the most pleasant or welcome sound to the bunnies, I tried my best (not really) to walk as carefully and as closely to them as possible.
Every time I see rabbits, I imagine the myriad of meanings Iāve been fed over the years and what theyāve come to mean across different cultures. For some, rabbits are a sign of fertility, luck, and creativity while others see rabbits as a sign of gentleness and cautiousness. Much like the astrological signs, each animal within the Chinese zodiac dwells within each of us. But itās a matter of what we call into our lives.Ā
When we are confronted with something or someone that we donāt understand, fear steps in, and much like the emotion of anger, it serves a great purpose. Within the Medicine Cards deck, the Rabbit symbolizes our fears and anxieties.
The most intriguing species I encountered was the Amami rabbit (yes, I was hopping around on the internet to learn more about them this past week). The Amami is a nocturnal forest-dwelling rabbit found in Japan. It senses danger and tries its best to steer clear from it.
But they are able to sense danger is afoot because of its keen sense of hearing. If theyāre fast enough, some rabbit species have powerful hind legs to swiftly hop away.
Journaling Exercise
While the tiger needs massive amounts of beauty sleep to be ferocious in the world, how might the energy of the Rabbit Year force us to look inward to know our fear(s) and what we are most anxious about?
For tarot pracittioners, this is also the Year of the Chariot. As Meg at Autostraddle writes, āThe Chariot wrestles with moving beyond the familiar, is willing to break old boundaries if it means that they can be true to themselves, and trusts in their own capacity for clear-eyed thinking and progressive ideals.ā
Coupled with The Chariot year, how might our desires to control and reign things in relate to our deepest insecurities?
Maybe, just maybe, the rabbit year is meant for us to reflect on ways we can balance being tender and intentional as opposed to being stunted by what scares us the most.
Join me for a Substack chat on this topic with our community starting on Monday, January 23.
New Class! Tarot for Writers: Unlocking Creative Pathways Through Intuitive Tools
A new Five and Nine class series starting at $100.00. Listeners can use code TAROT for a 10% discount on the full course.
Did you know that the Rider Waite Smith deck, one of the most popular tarot decks in the world, was designed by a struggling artist, editor and writer, Pamela Colman Smith? Tarot has been a guide and tool for creatives for hundreds of years to help unlock new pathways of thinking and making.
In this 4-part class, we'll look at the history of tarot; workshop how to use tarot for creative production, from exploring the history of characters to identifying the best way forward in one's writing career; and do a few practice readings with each other.
This course is meant to be practical, and participants should bring a chapter- or article-length work that they can hone in on for the course. Participants will come out of the course with a beginnerās writing practice and finessed piece, along with a tarot writing toolkit that includes a series of monthly and daily spreads they can use, a short overview of tarot, and readings for future self-guided study.Ā
Join An Xiao (Ana) Mina, Xiaowei R. Wang and Dorothy R. Santos of Five and Nine, a podcast and media production collective operating at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice for this class designed to help you unlock creative pathways. Weāre proud to be working with The Shipman Agency, a full service literary agency for writers.
Enjoying Five and Nine? You can support us in three ways:
Subscribe now for just $6 per month and get access to our paid programming. This podcast is always free, but your generous support also helps cover our costs, which include honoraria for our guest speakers, software subscriptions and our time. With enough support, weāll also be able to bring back written transcripts for the show.
Recommend this show to others. Do you know anyone who you think might enjoy this podcast? Send them a link. Ask them to tune in. You can send them snippets of our shows on Instagram, at @fiveandnine_podcast.
Leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Reviews help bring visibility and credibility to indie podcasts like ours and help people know what to expect when tuning in.
Five and Nine is a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. In this new world, weāre all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.Ā
Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Lead Producer. AX Mina
Quote is from Brene Brown, Atlas of the heart : mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. (New York: Random House), 13.