Megan Hamilton answers your questions

Megan (00:01.462)
I'm Megan Hamilton. Take two. I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment. Take three. I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment podcast. Well, it's Friday the 13th. It's one of my favorite days. And today, Mercury finally stations direct along with Venus. Thank you.

Fucking God. I'm gonna drop an F-bomb. I'm gonna use it. I don't know about you, but this Mercury retrograde has been fraught with tech glitches. I mean hours and hours trying to solve technical problems.

I actually I joke that I broke a $150 million tech company, but I I kind of did because they couldn't figure out what was going on, and I helped them figure out some workarounds. I'm not even kidding. all of which, because if you are on my email list, you would have seen that I tried to very quietly drop tarot readings.

By drop, I mean release them to a small section of my email list, who usually likes to get tarot readings. But I was actually going to drop them, meaning not offer them at all.

This year, at the end of the year, because today I am releasing something really big in my business that I've been working on for quite some time. And I didn't want to dilute the waters. But so many people, when they found out this was going to be the case, got in touch and said, No, please. I mean, I know a lot of you do your annual a year ahead reading with me. That's part of your

Megan (01:56.911)
planning ritual, or you give them as gifts every year. And so I thought, okay, fine, I'll do this really subtle, quiet, like gonna email you once.

And then I sent an email for my quiet launch and none of the links worked. So that was awesome. So then I sent an email I fixed everything. Or so I thought. Spoiler alert. Sent it out again. Links still didn't work. Now, in fairness, I am using a new

way of doing cart checkouts with this tech business.

They didn't work again. So finally, after trying for days to figure out what was happening, because again, I've got this lunch today and I didn't want this new way of doing things to impede people's ability to be able to pay me. I finally got it sorted out. And then on the Saturday,

tail between my legs a little bit, I emailed my entire group because I had wanted to do this exercise, give this exercise to my email list. It helps with jaw tension, it helps with tongue tension, it helps with upper back tension, helps with headaches, and I'd wanted to do this for a couple of years. Anyways, got it all ready, sent it out. Monday morning, that was on a Saturday, Monday morning.

Megan (03:38.241)
checking spam for I don't even know whatever reason and there's somebody who has replied to my email saying hi Megan I wanted to let you know that the link to the tongue exercise doesn't work why did this end up in spam this is somebody I've emailed with regularly anyways the lesson for me here is twofold one Mercury was letting me

work out the kinks of this new technology before today's launch. Trust me, I have tested it with so many different people. And two, it was an opportunity to reflect upon how can we look at challenges as teachers? Because there's another challenge in my life that causes me a great deal of stress. It

kind of can put a pall on my mood, on my sleep. I think about it often. And I think to myself, okay, well what's the shadow work here?

What what have I contributed to make this happen? And then I realized the other day, this challenge, and you'll notice I'm being broad, that's on purpose. This challenge is a teacher. And what what is this challenge teaching me? Wow, that really changed my focus on how I looked at this. How I interact with this challenge.

helps set me up for, you know, call it the hero's journey or whatever. How I think about myself in relationship to this challenge is an opportunity.

Megan (05:37.165)
That put a that put a spin on everything and I share that with you just in case you, like me, had a incredibly rocky Mercury retrograde and wonder WTUF, but instead now you can think, okay, what were the lessons? And there was a couple of other things that happened. I've mentioned this in my newsletter, really frustrating, complicated, unfortunate things that ultimately when I reflected on them.

were saving my butt in the long run. And that is what I often take away from a Mercury retrograde. Something has happened that is a lesson. It has something to teach me or it's saving me from something worse later. Which is how I like to think about the tower as well, quite frankly. The tower card in tarot, I promise I'm gonna pull a tarot card. It's going to be at the end today.

The Tower in Tarot usually comes up to let us know that something needs to change. And we can make the changes necessary, even though they're not usually fun, while we have this opportunity to see into the future of what could happen, right? We have the opportunity to fix the foundation or

we can ignore it or or maybe we don't have the time to put into it and then the tower's gonna happen on its own time whether we like it or not. That's that's always been my my positive spin I guess on the tower. So today we are going to I'm gonna answer a few questions that people have asked.

And then I'm gonna pull a tarot card and then I'm gonna head off to the Kingston Tarot and the Norman Festival conference, which happens every two years because the gals that I met two years ago here in my town, we all sat together at a table, we didn't know each other, and we became fast friends. We've been in a group chat ever since. Shout out to my to the fabulous women I'm about to see again.

Megan (07:46.509)
And that's what I'll be doing all weekend, as well as I think it just went out actually, launching my new workshop. And if you're interested in public speaking and creating a talk for 2027, it's called From Step to Stage, and I will be sure to put the link in the show notes. Okay. So Beck asks, when and how I was called to witchcraft, ext etc.

So it's like all things a journey, but one of my first memories of this kind of work was astral projecting in high school. I would put on depeche mode, specifically waiting for the night.

And I would have these I would I would be in space. That that's I was having an out-of-body experience created by myself and my intention. And it it you know, as opposed to like just imagining, it was a very different experience and one that I was able to start replicating on purpose when I was in university and you know, I went to theater school, so we did a lot of weird stuff. And

But that was just on my own, in my room, thinking about it, trying something that was calling to me. And the other thing I used to do in high school before I realized this was a thing was I used to do divination with my playing cards. So one of the ways that I would get to sleep, because this is well before even computers.

was I would play solitaire with a deck of cards on my bed to just, you know, wind down for the day. But then I started asking yes no. And I would say odd numbers are no, even numbers are yes. And I still do this with my tarot deck sometimes. Very rarely and I I don't I don't really do it for clients.

Megan (09:56.993)
It's just every tarot reader is different and it's just not something that I you know that I want to do. So that was that was, you know, in high school. And also my friend Veronica and I used to go to psychic fairs and I would be overwhelmed. I mean overwhelmed. I had no idea about how to protect your energy.

Fast forward to my twenty-third or twenty-fourth birthday and my best friend Jennifer Fawcett, who is also a guest on this pod, and we talk about this story there, gave me a tarot deck for my birthday. And I used it on and off for years, always using the book. I would actually go back, I should look and see, because I read the cards very differently now, but

I found it very grounding and comforting and helpful, especially when I was feeling very challenging feelings. And then about eight or nine years ago, I started following the moon cycles more regularly and doing ceremony and ritual on the moon cycles, and that has slowly evolved into what whatever I am today. This version of myself.

This version of myself finds four leaf clovers all the time. I use the herbs that grow in the grass in my backyard for lots of different things. I grow my own herbs and magical plants. I practice Reiki. I convene with my favorite tree in the back. Like I literally go under the branches that and put my hands on her and we we communicate.

I pick up feathers. I talk to my grandmothers in the park. I do all kinds of stuff. That makes me feel grounded, keeps me intentional, keeps me on a path, makes me think about stuff so that I can be present instead of feeling like life is happening to me. Thank you for that question. Okay. Beth says, What advice would you give

Megan (12:08.024)
For somebody who wants to get to know themselves. She feels like at 49 she's just met herself. Beth, if you're listening, I'm really excited about our upcoming tarot reading. Intentionality, shadow work, just being mindful, making decisions that are based on whatever vision you have for how you would like your life to go. Within our capacity, right?

And then once you have a clear-ish vision of how you would like things to go or the kind of person you would like to be, then every decision has a framework. Does this lead towards the version of myself that I am envisioning, or does it take away from that version?

And then that can sometimes make decision making a little bit easier. It takes the pressure off because there's it almost feels like it's an outside force saying, you know, like here's the framework, even though you made the framework, it can sometimes take the pressure off. And

Another way you can get to know yourself is to journal. Ask yourself questions. Questions are my love language. I love being asked questions. Truly. Which is why, if you ever feel like it, you can go to the link in the show notes and leave a voice message and ask me a question. I truly love it.

And tarot is another great way of getting to know yourself. I have always said to clients, if they have kind of a gut reaction to a card that is pretty negative before I give my interpretation of it, I ask them to reflect on that. Right? What's coming up for you that you that this would be, you know, the the interpretation that you had. And and that and it's it's a neutral question. It's not, you know, you're wrong and I'm right. Instead, it's

Megan (14:07.742)
What does it say about myself if this is what I think the card means? You can ask yourself that for anything. to get to know yourself better. Tiffany says, which walk or which market? Which is your favorite? Can I choose both?

I do love the witch walk. I didn't get to make it this year. This is this is in Kingston, but I've I I heard from lots of people that they're all over. The Witch's Walk in Kingston is where everybody it's it's around early October. Everybody dresses up like a witch or dresses as their true self. And then they meet and there's a walk and all kinds of activities and it raises funds for a wonderful local charity.

And the witch market, I mean, I love going to makers and seeing their wonderful things that they create. So it's too hard. I can't choose. I also Tiffany was a guest on the podcast and is the literal best. And Meredith says, I want to know more about you. What's your biz origin story? Well

I went to theater school in the 90s and it was bananas. and then I was an actor, or tried to be, for several years, and then I started writing my own work. And I got a couple of grants to write plays and that really changed everything for me.

I started to see the world a little bit differently because I realized I didn't have to keep waiting for somebody to choose me. I could just choose myself. Then I started playing music and everything shifted. On January second, two thousand and four, when I recorded for the very first time with my best friend Mark Vogelsang in Toronto.

Megan (16:21.142)
on Jarvis Street. And I realized this is what I want to do. So then I put everything. I I left I I've said this in other places, but I you know, I I left a partnership. Let's just say it was a partnership where I was doing all the work. Any anyways, whatever. I left it. I didn't want to do it anymore. I was producing for somebody else. And he He did not like that.

So I wasn't getting paid. and told me that he would see to it that I never worked in that tent again. So sorry, Brett. Your threat didn't work. Anyways,

And then I pursued music and I still am. I mean you've probably heard me talk about my Perimenopausal Witch Punk band called Hag. We had this amazing Halloween show where we we we did ceremony, we had other witch bands. It was it was fucking amazing. so you know if you haven't checked us out on Spotify, we have three songs, So Tired, Downtown, and Witches.

And that brings me incredible joy. But I started to work with speakers around twenty fourteen. I'd been working at university

in a particular department where the students had to do these presentation presentations. And I said, Well who's teaching them how to present? Like, you know, there's it's one thing to create the the speech essentially. And it's another thing like who's teaching them how to deliver the speech? And nobody was. So I I said, I'd like to do that. Can I try? And the training that I developed for them is the training that I still use now. So it's been the same

Megan (18:14.85)
That's how effective it is. If the visuals for this are a little bit glitchy, I apologize in advance. We still are in the shadow, I guess. And that's how I got started. That's how I came to be who I am today. bottom of the deck, just for funsies, is Ten of Cups. I love that for us. We've made it.

I'm gonna pull a card to see us out. I wanna thank you for being here. I am truly, truly, truly excited about some of the conversations we have coming up, and you are going to

be amazed at at what you get to witness. Okay. But to close us out for the lessons of Mercury and smooth sailing going forward. What a time it's been,

Such good news, hopeful news. May it continue. What's the lesson for today?

Megan (19:26.392)
temperance. Your guardian angel is looking over you.

Where can you alchemize the lessons from this Mercury retrograde into current and future you because they showed up for a reason and they want you to be able to keep I say up-leveling, I don't love that word, but I can't think of another word that doesn't feel appropriative.

As we move through this journey, where can you take a combination of all of your knowledge and skills and passions and create

Maybe this one's for Beth, yourself. And where can you also allow the universe, your guardian angels, God, whatever you like to use, to support you along the way? Remember, we have we are humans on this earth. We have both intuition, and we also have to ground into our humanity, our corporal status.

Our bodies. And remember that temperance comes after death. So something something had to be shed in order to move on to this next place. And if you look at the cards, if we you're looking at the Rider Wade Smith, notice the sun above the mountains. That is a crown. Right? If you practice Reiki, maybe that's asking you to give yourself a little Reiki today.

Megan (21:14.594)
And if you go back to the death card, you'll notice the same sun, the same shining. Alright, y'all. I am going to head to I just thought I thought I I think I just copied Channy. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I'm gonna head to this conference. First I'm gonna edit all of this. Thank you so much for being here.

I don't have my show notes in front of me as usual. So you can find you you can find all the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracingenchantment.com. Please make sure you're following us and leave a review or a message. We love voice notes. You can find those at embracingenchantment.com and make sure that you are following us because we have some incredible episodes. One is coming up with a witch whose entire

Homestead burned down in one of the BC fires, and some of the miracles that have happened from that. And then we have one of my longtime favorite tarot teachers. I'm gonna actually be taking some voice notes with folks at the tarot conference this weekend as well. So you'll be hearing from them. Until then, here's to building an enchanted life.