Embracing the Moon: Shadow Magic for a Full Moon

Megan Hamilton (00:00.906)
I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment podcast. And if you're listening on Friday, August 8th, which is the date that this podcast is released, then this is a tarot reading full of shadow questions to ask yourself what you'd like to release.

for the full moon occurring at the 3.55 a.m. Eastern Standard Time or are we in Eastern Savings Time? Either way, Eastern Time on Saturday, August 9th. So you're gonna wanna maybe press pause, gather a journal, a pen, open up your computer, or you can just think about it.

if you'd like, but we're going to use tarot to ask some questions. And before we do that, I'm going to pull a card to help us set an intention or a goal that we want to ask of the new moon, which will occur on August 23rd.

Megan Hamilton (01:26.766)
So the way I practice using the moon cycles is on the full moon, it's release and on the new moon, it's welcome. It's manifest, it's intentions. So we want to set an intention that we'd like to bring into the world for August 23rd. And today's tarot reading is going to help you figure out what you need to let go of, what shadow work you need to do between now and then in order to

get that intention rolling.

So if you don't have my shadow work workbook, things are going to change around here a little bit, especially in my practice. But for now, you can head over to UBU skills slash tools and grab my free shadow work workbook. And it helps you understand how I practice shadow work, what it is, the different ways you can consider practicing it and why it's a really useful tool.

especially in my work for speaking visibility and confidence, but also just for personal growth in general and frankly manifesting. So we can use the power of this full moon to begin to release whatever's going to come up in terms of shadow today with the carts. All right.

So first of all, we're going to use a card to help us set an intention. This could be a goal. This could be something we'd like to manifest. This could be a change. This could be a fresh perspective.

Megan Hamilton (03:18.541)
but we want to think about using August 23rd, or thereabouts as the starting point of whatever this is gonna be, okay?

Megan Hamilton (03:35.726)
And we have the six of swords. So I learned this from Jessica door and I believe that she actually got this from somebody else. But essentially we have what looks to be a mother and a child figure in in a boat that is being rode by a man who's using.

One of those long sticks so this could be like one of those gondola boats, you know in Venice On one side there's choppy waters, right difficulty on the other side the water is clear and The boat is filled with swords

They are in front of the mother and child figure and the person steering the boat.

And what Jessica Dore reminds us of is what happens if you take out the swords. The boat sinks. So.

I believe I'm quoting her, but it might be a misquote. It's something around this. Fear is the price of admission. We don't get from difficulty to something better.

Megan Hamilton (04:56.363)
without bringing our fears along for the ride. often means change. find change difficult. So.

Megan Hamilton (05:13.983)
In terms of an intention that you want to bring forward, where are you holding yourself back because of fear? And what would it look like if fear wasn't part of the game? Not that it's not going to be, but this is going to help you figure out what you actually want.

If fear wasn't part of the problem, if you didn't worry about the judgment of others, if you didn't worry about money, if you didn't worry about upsetting people, if you didn't worry about anything, what would you do?

Megan Hamilton (05:54.485)
You can pause if you want and journal that out.

or maybe you already know. So that's your intention, okay, for August 23rd. Here's the shadow questions we're gonna start thinking about. Now, like I said, you can either allow this stuff to wash over you and just let yourself journal free form and let whatever hits come to you be the springboards and that's the right way to do it.

or you can press pause and go through each question and that's the right way to do it. There's no wrong way to do it. We're just asking you to, there's some kind of plane.

Megan Hamilton (06:40.141)
We're just asking you to.

And by we, I mean me. All of us together, all of us who are energetically part of this podcast episode as much as possible. Release your ego. Speak to yourself in a kind voice. We are aiming for empathy so that we can actually work on this stuff. Shame, guilt, fear.

Those folks, while they have a purpose, hinder us from getting to the truth of the matter. And sometimes they create their own blocks. And sometimes we know that they do that and we use them so we don't have to do the hard stuff. And who could blame us? Right? In the year 2025. There's a lot going on. All right. So what's our first card today?

Megan Hamilton (07:37.111)
the magician.

Megan Hamilton (07:41.582)
with many, many caveats, you create the life you want. Now, maybe you are on my newsletter and you got the one about four-leaf clovers and now I find them all the time. And people say, how do you find so many four-leaf clovers? And the answer is really simple. I look for them.

I put effort into it. I spend time looking. It's important to me. I like it.

It's meditative. I practice it.

and I get them.

Megan Hamilton (08:30.217)
That's kind of why I wanted us to come up with a goal for the 23rd for the new moon or whatever it was that you that you know you came up with when you pulled that when we got that six of swords is because we're going to be working towards something. So this magician card, which is, know, a pretty good card in terms of manifesting. Where do you believe that you can't? And what do need to do to work through that?

So this is your shadow work stuff. Every time you come up to a, I couldn't, or I can't, or that's not possible. I want you to start questioning and deconstructing where that thought is coming from. Now, again, there's a lot of caveats here, right? We are dealing with a lot of stuff happening around the world. There is a lot that we cannot do right now. Okay, so we're not gonna pretend like we're just gonna magical thinking our way through this.

However, there is a lot that we can be responsible for and we certainly can be responsible for our own inner world. How we cultivate that and then how that manifests into our outer world. And knowing what you want is the first place to start. And then what can you do to build the self-efficacy that you need in order to trust that you can make your outer world

again as much as possible because we don't control everything and in fact we probably control we probably control more than we think and we control less than we think

So where are you not believing in your abilities to create infinite magic? Okay. And again, go back to my shadow work workbook. If you want some help figuring out what I find to be the most supportive way to practice shadow work.

Megan Hamilton (10:33.431)
All right, what's the next card?

Megan Hamilton (10:39.565)
Queen of Pentacles. If you took my Magic of Aliveness course, then you know that that's been what I've been focusing on this year. Magic, the magic of aliveness and pentacles as the symbol for that. So with the Queen, I actually pulled this card for myself this morning, with the Queen we're looking at flourishing, abundance, growth, surrounded by beauty. The Divine Feminine, the feminine.

way of looking at the world, nurturing togetherness, community building fertility, that small rabbit in the corner of the card, birthing, bringing forth manifesting, right? Just sense a theme here.

She is contemplating what it is to be alive. And so my questions for you are, where do your behaviors need to shift in order to be able to see the magic that is already all around you? And so that could look like gratitude, it could look like noticing what abundance is, right? If you're hung up on money,

How can you change your relationship with money so that you look at abundance differently as resources and not just money or lack of it? Money is nothing. It's a representation of resources. We also think of pentacles sometimes as the body and therefore behaviors. And that's why I said.

What behaviors might you need to switch in order to see the magic around you? And that could mean, all right, I'm to go to the park and spend five minutes looking for butterflies or something that I think is beautiful and allowing myself to just notice that and think about it and cultivating that as a behavior or a habit or a shift. Because again, going back to that four leaf clover analogy.

Megan Hamilton (12:50.754)
we find what we're looking for.

I'm to pull one last card for you today.

Megan Hamilton (13:04.302)
our last card.

Megan Hamilton (13:12.632)
Wheel of Fortune. So this card, you know, okay, Fortune, absolutely.

Megan Hamilton (13:21.9)
Where do you already have fortune? Where have you been fortunate? This year already, let's just say.

when you find your brain going, here are the ways I haven't been fortunate, you say, I get it. I absolutely know that you might even just want to let that go and like, like let that pass through you by writing it all out, letting your brain have its moment of whatever it needs. However, we want to be focusing on where you have been fortunate. And in Mitch Horowitz's recent book, Practical Magic,

which I really enjoyed. He talks about the Wheel of Fortune in a really interesting way, which is actually, I'm assuming this is from that book, but it could also be from something I followed from him on social media. But I think it's in the book. We think of the Wheel of Fortune as like luck and fortune, right? Lady luck. However, it's a wheel and so much of magic, tarot, pagan practice.

revolves around a wheel and cycles because we have to remember that when things are difficult, they will change.

And when things are really, really good, they will change and they have to change because there needs to be cycles in order of for the world to turn for things to happen for us to grow. So he brought up this story that I hadn't heard before, which is after the war, Winston Churchill lost the election.

Megan Hamilton (15:06.124)
And you think to yourself, what? mean, some of you will know that I didn't. How could somebody so well regarded in terms of that war lose the election?

Lots of factors. So, you know, he was riding high and then he rode low and then he won the next election. And that's the cycle. And so if you are in a place where things are going really well and you're very, very happy, I don't mean to, this is not like, you know, I don't forget to expect the worst, but instead we have to be flexible. We have to hold both possibilities in our hands so that we're prepared.

and that our nervous system doesn't constantly get this jolt of up and down to the best of our ability, okay? And if things are really rough for you specifically, and even we could apply this to the world, there will be changes. There will be things that bring us back to hope, small glimmers. Keep your eyes open for those. We find what we're looking for.

And again, we're not going to Pollyanna our way through all of this, but we are going to remember that all of this is a whole and we cannot only focus on the difficult and the challenge and the grief and the unfairness and the cruelty. We also have to find the parts of life that exist at the same time.

I hope this left you with lots of things to contemplate. I hope it helped springboard some shifts. And let me know. Leave me a voice note at embracingenchantment.com.

Megan Hamilton (16:59.886)
Leave us a comment. Send me an email. I love the feedback. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, please, please, the way to make it keep going. Can you hear all these planes in the background? I don't know what's going on. The way to keep going is for you to, I was gonna say embrace, share, right? Social media shares. Follow me on social media. Embracing Enchantment Pod is the Instagram handle.

sign up for the newsletter, tell your friends if you liked this episode, leave a message, leave a comment, make sure you're following. And if you love what's happening, then please engage with it because that is the best way for me to be able to keep showing up and bringing this stuff to you. And I love it. And I hope you do too.

Until then, here's to building an enchanted life.