Incandescent Tarot Podcast

In Episode 7 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, arriving at the second court card in the wands suit.

Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with tarot over time: through art-making, daily life, season, conversation, and sensory experience.

This month’s focus: The Knight of Wands

Here, we dive into the element of fire as expressed through the questing, impatient, and energetic Knight.

Listen in to learn all about the process of creating the Knight of Wands, the card’s connection to getting things done, and why axe body spray may encapsulate this card’s charm and dingusry.

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

About the Series

Seeing Tarot is a collaborative podcast documenting the creation of a tarot deck from the ground up. Through ongoing dialogue, Anna and Gina explore symbolism, artistic process, intuition, sensory experience, and the evolving language of tarot.

Rather than offering definitive meanings, the series approaches tarot as something lived: relational, interpretive, embodied, and continually unfolding through attention and conversation.

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

October continues the intesnity of September’s cards, but this time on a broader stage. The theme of the month is the chaos of The Tower. As structures crumble, we’re being asked to focus on our core values while cultivating the calm awareness we need to withstand the collapse and gather strength for rebuilding via the Four of Swords. Our challenge is to avoid being swept up into big picture overwhelm and fatalism in our card of 2026, the Wheel of Fortune. Meanwhile, on the ground things are much more constructive as the Three of Pentacles illustrates the potential for ongoing collaborations to take root. There may even be a head start available when it comes to rebuilding after The Tower has finished its collapse, but only if we commit and keep going, together.

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

Welcome to Elemental Explorations, a podcast and practice following water, fire, earth, and air through the seasonal shifts of the equinoxes and solstices hosted by Bethany Carder of hAfhAAA and My Resonant Frequencies and Gina Wisotzky of Incandescent Tarot and Alchemag.

Together, we move with the elements as living guides — through breath, sound, movement, image, myth, and deep listening. Gina brings the wisdom of tarot as an embodied and intuitive language, helping us listen to the symbols, archetypes, and relational patterns moving through the Fire Body. Bethany brings astronomical astrology and stellar somatics as a way of attuning to the living sky, the solar rhythm, and the body’s relationship with Earth, season, and cosmos.

Episode Overview

This episode moves from dialogue into embodied integration, poetry, and a listening meditation on the Earth body.

The integration practice begins with three minutes of alternate nostril breathing, followed by humming. A gentle laugh is gradually brought into the hum until it opens into ridiculous, full-bodied laughter. This sequence draws inspiration from teachings by Vickie Dodd and Laraaji, using breath, vibration, resonance and laughter to move energy through the body and prepare the field for deeper listening.

From there, we move into poetry from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home before entering a listening meditation on the Earth body.

The meditation moves from beneath the Earth toward the surface and into the home:

seismic activity → soil → tree → insects → birds → food preparation → voice → rest

We begin with a sonification of seismic data from the September 27, 2014 eruption of Mount Ontake, Japan, a steam-driven eruption in which hydrothermal fluids moved upward through rock toward the surface. The meditation begins at the meeting place of the elements: water moving through rock, transformed through heat and pressure, and emerging through the Earth body.

From there, we move through a contact-microphone recording within a compost heap and upward into a willow tree. Listening through the contact mic, we hear the fluid nature of the Earth body: the internal activity of the tree, water moving from roots toward leaves through xylem, sugars moving through phloem throughout the living tree, and wind moving through its body.

The sound field opens outward into terrestrial life through crickets and cicadas, and then upward into birds.

From there, we enter the home: spinach being sorted, food sizzling, water boiling for ramen, and the metallic rhythm of two forks separating noodles. Earth, water and fire meet through the ordinary act of preparing food while the outside world remains present through the open window.

The meditation closes in the kitchen, singing with the crickets while cooking: voice, insects, food preparation and the surrounding environment sharing the same sonic field.

The underlying noise floor is composed from field recordings gathered while meditating with the Earth body through the seasonal cycle between the June solstice and the September equinox. The approach to listening, recording and composition draws inspiration from the work of Hildegard Westerkamp and Annea Lockwood, including ideas from Westerkamp’s Music, Sound and Conflict, and from practices of attentive environmental listening in which field recording becomes a form of relationship rather than simply the collection of environmental sound.

Credits

Abram Morphew — piano; sonification of seismic data from Mount Ontake, September 27, 2014; production and mastering.

Gina Wisotzky — field recordings of crickets, cicadas and birds; sorting spinach and cooking sounds; recording in Durham, North Carolina.

Bethany Carder — field recordings of crickets and cicadas; cooking, boiling water and metal utensil recordings; seasonal Earth-body field recordings and noise floor; voice, poetry and meditation introduction; editing and mixing; recording in Portland, Oregon.

Recorded by Gina Wisotzky and Bethany Carder on August 25, 2026 at 6:00 AM PDT / 9:00 AM EDT, in Durham, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon.

Text

Ursula K. Le Guin — Always Coming HomeExcerpt from the Second and Third Houses of the Earth, pp. 84–85 in the edition used for this episode:

Come among the unsown grasses, bearing richly the oaks, heavy with acorns, the sweet roots and unploughed earth. Come among the deer on the hill, the fish in the river, the quail in the meadows. You can take them. You can eat them. Like you, they are food. They are with you, not for you. Who are their owners? This is the puma’s range. This hill is the vixen’s. This is the owl’s tree. This is the mouse’s run. This is the minnow’s pool. It is all one place. Come take your place. No fences here but sanctions. No war here but dying. There is dying here. Come hunt. It is yourself you hunt. Come gather yourself from the grass, the branch, the earth. Walk here, sleep well on the ground that is not yours but is yourself.

References + Influences

John Cage + Merce CunninghamChance Conversations: An Interview with Merce Cunningham and John Cage

LaraajiLARAAJI: Playing as the Field

Laraaji’s teachings also inform the use of laughter as an embodied energetic practice within the episode’s integration sequence.

Vickie Dodd / Sacred SoundworksTeachings on sound, vibration, resonance and the body inform the use of humming within the integration practice.

https://sacredsoundworks.com/

David Abram + Merlin SheldrakeOn the Anarchic Proliferation of Earthly PerspectivesA deep-ecology dialogue between cultural ecologist David Abram and mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, originally published by Emergence Magazine. Shared by Gina as part of the inquiry into what it is to be Earthling and how we understand ourselves within the wider field of earthly agencies.https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/honoring-the-wild-proliferation-of-earthly-perspectives/

Hildegard WesterkampField-recording and soundscape-composition practice, including ideas from Music, Sound and Conflict, informing the use of environmental recording as attentive encounter and compositional material.

Annea LockwoodField-recording and environmental listening practices informing the approach to listening to, recording and composing with the Earth body.

Freesound Sources

Soil Listening - Woodlice and Ants - 20 minutes - 06.05by Mark_Taylor_Echophora_https://freesound.org/s/734779/License: Attribution 4.0

wind in willow 02 contact mic 150426_0644.flacby klankbeeldhttps://freesound.org/s/272322/License: Attribution 4.0

Research Links EE

Practice Note - breath - movement

Please honor your body throughout the breath and movement practices. Nothing should feel forced, strained, dizzying, painful, or uncomfortable. If anything does not feel right, return to your natural breath, pause the movement, and rest as needed.

For alternate nostril breathing, keep the breath gentle and do not hold or force the breath. If you are congested, feeling lightheaded or short of breath, pregnant, or managing cardiovascular or respiratory concerns, you may choose to breathe naturally and simply listen instead.

Move only within a comfortable range, and choose stillness whenever that better supports your body.

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

September marks a forceful transition into a new phase. Thankfully, this force is self-generated as we embody the decisive determination of The Chariot. This is a month to focus on our unique paths and what we can bring to the world. While the environment around us is full of opinions and distractions as shown in the Five of Wands, we’re being asked to learn from the feedback we get while also filtering out the noise that doesn’t speak to our larger objectives. While it may be tempting to hide behind lofty concepts and spiritual practices, embodying a less-helpful version of The High Priestess, we’re instead being asked to learn to step back in the face of new information - to take a moment like The Hanged Man - and to immediately rejoin the fray once we’ve seen what’s happening.

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 7 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, arriving at the second court card in the wands suit.

Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with tarot over time: through art-making, daily life, season, conversation, and sensory experience.

This month’s focus: The Knight of Wands

Here, we dive into the element of fire as expressed through the questing, impatient, and energetic Knight.

Listen in to learn all about the process of creating the Knight of Wands, the card’s connection to getting things done, and why axe body spray may encapsulate this card’s charm and dingusry.

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

About the Series

Seeing Tarot is a collaborative podcast documenting the creation of a tarot deck from the ground up. Through ongoing dialogue, Anna and Gina explore symbolism, artistic process, intuition, sensory experience, and the evolving language of tarot.

Rather than offering definitive meanings, the series approaches tarot as something lived: relational, interpretive, embodied, and continually unfolding through attention and conversation.

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

August continues the themes of presence, attention, work, and dedication brought into focus last month; this time, however, we’re feeling less self-conscious, directly immersing ourselves in the busy complexity of the Ten of Pentacles. In doing so, we’re accessing new layers of peace and healing, including some surprising insights and epiphanies, as we practice embodying The Star. We might be tempted, though, to tip a little too far into reverie, fantasy, and wishful thinking as the Seven of Cups tempts us to distract ourselves from the realness in front of us, whether as an escape or act of self-protection. The Three of Wands is our opportunity card, a direct next step from our opportunity last month, the Two of Wands. So we’re gifted with some linear growth! How exciting. Note where you’re secretly committing to budding projects, plans, and self-directed visions for the future. We can enjoy this time in-between vision and structure by exploring, experimenting, and remaining open to inspiration.

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 7 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, arriving at the second court card in the wands suit.

Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with tarot over time: through art-making, daily life, season, conversation, and sensory experience.

This month’s focus: The Knight of Wands

Here, we dive into the element of fire as expressed through the questing, impatient, and energetic Knight.

Listen in to learn all about the process of creating the Knight of Wands, the card’s connection to getting things done, and why axe body spray may encapsulate this card’s charm and dingusry.

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

About the Series

Seeing Tarot is a collaborative podcast documenting the creation of a tarot deck from the ground up. Through ongoing dialogue, Anna and Gina explore symbolism, artistic process, intuition, sensory experience, and the evolving language of tarot.

Rather than offering definitive meanings, the series approaches tarot as something lived: relational, interpretive, embodied, and continually unfolding through attention and conversation.

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

All the emotion from June gives way to abundant growth. We’re invited to sit securely on the throne of the King of Pentacles, trusting that we’ve learned enough to tend to what’s coming into full bloom in our lives. Those lives, meanwhile, are bustling with activity, work, and connections that need all of our attention and resources, as shown in the maximalist Ten of Pentacles. Our challenge, however, is to not take this intensity as a reason to reinvent the wheel - charging into fresh ideas, systems, and investments of all sorts like the Knight of Pentacles. That would be a surefire way of avoiding the newness that’s on the horizon along with the abundant goodness we’ve been working so hard to cultivate. Instead, the Two of Wands asks us to look for a spark that’s not directly tied to our day-to-day life right now. This isn’t some practical edit or innovation, but a new and likely creative offshoot that could take us someplace considerable, though for now it’s just time to dream and envision what could come while enjoying whatever it is we’ve discovered that's lighting a fire within.

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 6 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, arriving at the first court card in the wands suit.

Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with tarot over time: through art-making, daily life, season, conversation, and sensory experience.

This month’s focus:

The Page of Wands

Here, we dive into the element of fire as expressed through youthful energy: vigorous, vibrant, and awkwardly enthusiastic.

Listen in to learn all about the process of creating the Page of Wands, the importance of beginner’s mind, and why Paul Atreides is the ultimate PofW in fiction.

Page of Wands Moodboard

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

About the Series

Seeing Tarot is a collaborative podcast documenting the creation of a tarot deck from the ground up. Through ongoing dialogue, Anna and Gina explore symbolism, artistic process, intuition, sensory experience, and the evolving language of tarot.

Rather than offering definitive meanings, the series approaches tarot as something lived: relational, interpretive, embodied, and continually unfolding through attention and conversation.

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

Welcome to Elemental Explorations, a podcast and practice following water, fire, earth, and air through the seasonal shifts of the equinoxes and solstices hosted by Bethany Carder of My Resonant Frequencies and Gina Wisotzky of Incandescent Tarot.

Together, we move with the elements as living guides — through breath, sound, movement, image, myth, and deep listening. Gina brings the wisdom of tarot as an embodied and intuitive language, helping us listen to the symbols, archetypes, and relational patterns moving through the Fire Body. Bethany brings astronomical astrology and stellar somatics as a way of attuning to the living sky, the solar rhythm, and the body’s relationship with Earth, season, and cosmos.

In this episode, released on the Summer Solstice, we turn toward the Sun and the Fire Body — the heat that animates, clarifies, transforms, and calls us into motion as we cross the threshold from spring’s waters into the fullness of summer light.

Episode Overview

Moving from the Moon-Water Body into the Sun-Fire Body, this episode uses astronomical astrology, stellar somatics, and tarot to explore solar vitality, digestion, radiance, and expression. At the Summer Solstice, the Sun illuminates this Taurus-Gemini threshold, where embodied earth meets breath, voice, curiosity, and exchange.

The fire body is our internal hearth: warmth, circulation, metabolism, expression, and the capacity to turn experience into energy. Through breath, humming, laughter, and deep listening, we work with the body’s rhythms directly: Breath of Fire awakens heat and alertness, humming organizes the system through vibration and the vagus nerve, and laughter gives activation a pathway into expression, release, and rest.

Fire becomes not force, but the body’s capacity to metabolize experience without burning out.

Brief Safety Note

These solar practices alter respiratory and circulatory rhythms. Breath of Fire, or Kapalabhati, is not recommended during pregnancy or while navigating high blood pressure, cardiovascular conditions, vertigo, hernias, gastric ulcers, epilepsy, or severe respiratory concerns.

If you feel dizzy, strained, or overwhelmed, return to natural breathing. Your autonomy is central to this practice; pause, soften, or rest at any time.

Closing Practice

In the spirit of Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening, we open to fire as teacher and living guide. Our closing soundscape follows a simple elemental arc: solar winds, sunrise, cicadas, fire crackle, lava flows, seismic rumble, and sunset fire crackle amid the hum of crickets, and Koshi fire chimes.

We invite you to honor your own fire body through simple acts of attention and tending: step into morning sunlight, cook with presence, sit near a candle or hearth, listen to cicadas or crickets, feel warmth on stone or skin, hum into the chest, laugh from the belly, breathe with rhythm, and rest before the fire becomes too much.

Notice how fire lives in your place: in heat, dryness, growth, combustion, electricity, digestion, decay, repair, and renewal. Learn who tends fire where you live — on the land, in the home, in community, in ceremony, in ecological care — and consider how your own vitality is connected to that wider tending.

We honor Indigenous fire tenders whose relationships with fire have shaped and protected living landscapes across generations. This threshold invites us to learn how Sun and fire shape our own places, and who is tending the ecological health of the lands we call home.

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