Author: Raine Shakti

Raine Shakti believes in living her life cairn by cairn and in helping others learn to do the same. Her day job is in the training and communications field and her best professional experiences are when she is able to empower people. She has spent the last few years reclaiming her life and her inner warrior. Part of this journey was becoming an ordained priestess with the Fellowship of Isis. Her Matron deities are Nephthys who has helped her become a true virgin woman, the Morrigan who has taught her what it means to be sovereign, and Yemaya who has taught her the strength in having a loving heart.

Shadow Work–Day 9

How does the shadow of past relationships influence current relationships?

The Star tells me that every person I meet will be measured against X and they most likely will come up short. The problem is that my relationship with X while deep and emotionally intense, was not a full time in your face kind of relationship. We never lived together, had kids together, fought over bills, etc. We got to go out and have fun and be on our best behavior. Ironically, one of the things I always get pissy about when John talks about how wonderful his girlfriends are is that he never was married to them, was poor with them, etc. I guess I’m being kind of hypocritical because I’m measuring everyone I meet against the same kind of standard. The other thing the star tells me is that because deep within my soul there is a little part of me that still wants to have a relationship with X, that hope stands in my way of future relationships.

The Magician, in this instance, is a charlatan and someone who is all smoke and mirrors and not who he appears to be. John was definitely a charlatan. When I met him he was in program and I truly thought that he believed in the 12 steps and was truly walking the walk. However, once we moved in together, I realized that he was paying the steps lip service and that he really just wanted to be a party boy. He also told me that he wanted someone who would walk beside him and be his partner. He said he didn’t want someone who walked in the shadows. However, when we were together that changed and he was constantly trying to take me down a peg. I’m afraid of getting involved with someone else only to find out that they are also a fraud.

Dreamer Ten reminds me of drowning in my own blood and not being able to see straight because of the pain that is just pouring off of me. I am afraid of meeting and getting into a relationship with someone else because I am afraid that I would not be able to stand having my heart broken again. It hurt so bad and I literally felt like I was crying blood because of my heart ache. I keep people at arm’s length because I am terrified of being hurt again.

These are intensely powerful cards and I can feel the heaviness rolling off of them. There is a part of me that says how will I ever trust someone enough to get into a relationship with all of this baggage hanging over my head.

Shadow Work–Day 8: How does my shadow react when I am untrusting?

How does my shadow react when I am untrusting?

The fool jumps off a cliff when I am untrusting as if pushing me to trust, trust, trust. I also find that when I am untrusting, I am put in situations where I have no choice but to trust. That is pretty true for me as I took a new job last year doing organizational change management, but while we are selling OCM, I have to be billable so I have been doing project management work for the last year and that has been incredibly hard for me because I do not have the skills to do all the work myself and I have had to trust my team to do the work for me. Although there have been a few bumps along the way, ultimately the team delivered.

Dancer Four tells me that when I am untrusting, I start to spend too much time looking inward and examining my own soul without liking what I find. When I am untrusting, I start to see everyone else as other instead of seeing our similarities. Dreamer Four also tells me that when I an untrusting, I don’t see the help that is all around me and I reject people.

When I am untrusting of the world at large, I will often find one or two people that I do trust and become obsessive with them. Dancer Prince speaks of this obsession as he peers fearfully from behind the tree and watches the world as if it is a dark and scary place. Being untrusting means that I am coming from a place of fear and I divide the world into “Us and Them.”

All in all, my shadow starts indulging in bad and fearful behavior as a reminder that I need to open my heart once again. I have to be honest and say that I am so flipping sick of hearing that I need to open my heart. It seems that the cards tell me that constantly to the point I just don’t want to hear it anymore.

Shadow Work–Day 8

How does my shadow react when I am untrusting?

Shadow Work–Day 7

How important are relationships to my shadow?

Warrior Ten tells me that my shadow likes relationships to feel needed. My shadow wouldn’t know what to do with itself without someone relying on him. However, this is a double edged sword as my shadow also feels used by people who “walk all over it.” My shadow also takes on other people’s burdens as a way of feeling important and needed. In some ways, my shadow would feel as if it did not have a right to exist if it wasn’t doing for others. This was the mentality that my mother drilled into my head as a child and it is a hard mindset to break.

The Hermit shows the flip side of my shadows relationship to other people. Once I have reached my fill of other people, I like to retreat and to be by myself with no human interruptions. I need the room to contemplate and to breathe. Being around people can be suffocating for me and it can be incredibly overwhelming.

I had to smile as I saw the warrior king as the warrior king is prancing alone in a field of battle. He likes his glory and he likes to be the center of attention. My shadow loves to be the center of attention. I’ve gotten better about it, but in the past I truly had to feel as if everyone was paying attention to me or I would cease to exist. I liked to be the center of attention for things I did well, but I was also content being the center of attention as a victim.

Shadow Work–Day 6

How does a lover’s shadow influence my shadow?

Pan tells me that my lover’s shadow is in part about indulgence and drunken lust and that is very true. My ex was all about indulgence and having a good time. He was someone who didn’t want to be responsible, but always wanted to have a good time and he always wanted me to be at his side. It was as if he did not understand that I had responsibilities and when I had to be up early, I did not want to be out until 3 am partying. When we were first together, I’d let him lead me down that garden path, but then I grew up and became…

The Elder who tells me that I realized I had responsibilities in life and that if I wanted to be successful, I had to fulfill those responsibilities and could not do that if I was out partying. The Elder is also about tradition and ritual and studying and doing the work. The Elder is about doing the work required for initiation and not just stepping up and getting it handed to us. Oddly this card resonates with me for another reason as well as my ex always accused me of getting my degree handed to me and not working for it. While it is true that my parents paid for my degree, it is also true that I worked hard for everything I had and I continue to work hard for my success.

Warrior Six tells me that my ex was all about the adulation and the accolades and not about doing the work and that’s true. I always wrote for the sheer joy of writing, but his focus on writing was selling and I didn’t like to write just to sell. I’ve realized that I write as a form of catharsis. It is about putting my story down on paper. Sometimes I’d turn my stories into fiction because it was less painful for fictional characters to deal with my pain than it was to acknowledge the pain as mine. My ex is all about the victory lap and he’s also all about using people to share their glory. He was horrible to our kids, but he loved to brag about them.

Shadow Work–Day 5

What parts of my ancestral shadow are found in my own shadow

The first card I pulled was the Sun and I’m not sure how to interpret this card for this position. I think the best I could come up with is the hive mentality. The fairy queen is pulling me in to follow the hive up the mountain and that truly fits my ancestral background as they had no tolerance for people who were different or who went their own way. If you chose to be different, you were mocked or “put in your place.” This card should be about success and joy, but the way it is drawn the success and joy feels almost ominous. I almost get a feeling of the borg out of this card as it is about assimilating people.

Dreamer eight is about being trapped in a web and it follows along with my interpretation of the sun
card. This is about being pulled in and not knowing what is reality and not knowing what is smoke and mirrors. This reflects both my family and my relationship with John as I was constantly told things that were not true. I was told that I was unattractive, that women could not lead, that I was nothing. It gets to the point that you don’t know what is the truth anymore and it is all too easy to lose yourself in the lies and keep yourself trapped because you don’t know what reality is.

The Wheel of Fortune is an interesting card as it is all about fate and about believing in fate and not free will. The one thing that strikes me about this card is that the fairy is offering food and it seems that is almost an attempt to draw me in and to pull me into the games. This card is also about gambling and that is something that makes sense based on my mother’s history with lottery tickets.

Shadow Work–Day 4

How does my shadow hurt my relationships?

The Dancer tells me that I like to be alone. I like to dance alone, I like to just be alone. It is hard for me to be part of a group as my normal state of being is aloneness. This is a card of healing and love, but for me that is healing myself and not healing the world.

Warrior three tells me that sometimes everything in my life is performance art. I show up because I have to instead of because I really want to. This works well at work where I get paid to show up and basically tell a story, but it doesn’t work as well in my personal life because it keeps me from forming the real and intimate connections that I crave. This is supposed to be a card of collaboration, but for me it speaks to people working alone.

Maker King tells me that I intimidate people. This may be because I am skilled at what I do, but could also be because I give off a vibe that I’m not interested in hearing other people’s opinions. I like to be the king and I like to think that my skills are so special that no one could improve them. Interestingly, I’ve been getting an education in learning to sell lately as I’ve had to put material together for our sales team and every time I do it, it gets a little bit better, but I’m not quite there it. I have to be honest and say that this is literally one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do.

Shadow Work–Day 3

How will integrating my shadow improve my relationships?

Maker Prince–The maker prince is kind and gentle and spends time in nature with animals. My knowledge of my shadow and my honesty with myself will help me to build true connections with people. I don’t put on airs or pretend to be something I’m not. I also acknowledge my flaws and work hard to truly change my interactions with people. All of these things are attractive to people because they get the sense that I am real. I’m also grounded and am beginning to be comfortable in my own skin, flaws and all.

Death–I have learned over my life that nothing stays the same and that sometimes we have to say

goodbye to things that matter to us so that we can move on. One of the best lessons I’ve learned from John is to let go when things are no longer working. I held on to the dead and lifeless corpse of my marriage for way too long and that caused a lot of problems for me. I’ve learned that it is okay to work on relationships, but sometimes you have to acknowledge they are dead. Although I don’t always welcome endings, I’ve learned to welcome the transformation that comes with them. There is always something new to discover and to learn. Change is always hard, but it is easier when we welcome transformation and accept that there is something new and different coming into our lives.

Dreamer Five–At first glance, this is a very depressing card as it is about hope being discarded and about powerlessness and resignation. However, I’ve learned that unrealistic hope can be unhealthy. Sometimes we cling to a dream that we hope will work out, but in reality we’ve outgrown that dream and it is time to move on. When we aren’t able to discard this hope and move on, it can hold us back. It’s really interesting that this card showed up for me because I am finally at a point in my life where I’ve let go of the hope that a relationship will work out with someone. Intellectually, I’ve known it for a couple of years, but int eh back of my mind I had hope that it would magically work out. Being able to let go of that hope means that I can finally move on and be ready for the right relationship for me.

Shadow Work–Day 2: How do my relationships mirror my shadow side?

How do my relationships mirror my shadow side?

The hanged man can tell us a lot of things as sometimes he tells us we need to get another perspective, but in this instance the Hanged Man is telling me that my relationships are about self sacrifice. I sacrificed myself for my ex-husband. I made myself less and less so that he could feel better about himself until I almost disappeared. I sacrifice for my children so that they have what they need and I sacrifice at work. The lesson I’ve been learning about sacrifice is that it is important that we know we have a choice in saying yes or no to sacrifice. I was raised to believe that my needs were secondary to everyone else’s so I never thought that I had a choice in saying yes or no to sacrifice. I’ve learned over the last eight years that I do have a choice and sacrifices that are willingly made are much sweeter than those that are demanded.

The Warrior tells me that I am fierce and protected in all of my relationships. I never feel comfortable letting my guard down and just being. I always have to be on the defensive and always protecting my tender heart. Additionally, I love to drive and be in control. These characteristics make it very hard for people to get to know me. The cards have been telling me for a very long time that it is time to let down my guard and to let people in and it is something that is very hard for me to do.

The fool is double edged as I leaped into my marriage without careful consideration and ended up in an untenable situation. Since then, I have drawn up strict lists of criteria for a future mate that almost no one has a hope of meeting and I’m applying those criteria like a USDA judge grading meat. If someone scores too low on one criteria, I’m not even willing to “waste my time” meeting them. The fool is telling me that I cannot just leap in with nary a care in the world, but I also cannot be too closed minded about the people I let into my life.

Overall this was a scarily accurate reading and truly reflected where I am in life. I need to continue to reflect on this.

Shadow Work–Day 2

How do my relationships mirror my shadow side?

Overall this was a scarily accurate reading and truly reflected where I am in life. I need to continue to reflect on this.