Sense of Soul - The Cosmic Seed

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Today on Sense of Soul we have Lalania Simone, she is a multi-faceted author, artist, and mystic devoted to a path of liberation and awakening. Her early questioning of religious dogma launched her lifelong spiritual journey. She has lived in and experienced both the grit and soul of cities such as San Diego, Denver, and Brooklyn. The fusion of Lalania's esoteric knowledge and her experience in urban society creates a unique Urban Soul Warrior perspective. She understands the power of frequency and is dedicated to raising the vibration of the planet. Lalania is the creatrix of Tarot of the Cosmic Seed, the Oracle of Awakening and the upcoming Wise Earth Medicine Tarot. She also creates sacred crystal talismans to amplify particular energies. She is the author of Urban Soul Warrior: Self Mastery in the Midst of the Metropolis, a book written with the intention to make spiritual concepts accessible. Lalania is one of the co-owners of Alchemy Ritual Goods- a metaphysical store in Denver, which offers Ancestral Medicine Clinic, a sliding scale clinic offering multiple modalities dedicated to healing and spiritual liberation. In an effort to decolonize the tarot, remove outdated ideas of hierarchy, and shift ingrained gender norms, Lalania, founder of Alchemy Ritual Goods, has created a lush and vibrant deck with unique imagery and symbolism and an array of people and cultures. Having renamed the royalty cards—including the Hierophant, Emperor, Empress, and the court cards—Lalania has expanded their interpretation into energy signatures rather than personality types. The result is a deeply diverse spiritual tool, a bridge to the mysterious and the esoteric, as well as a guide to the everyday. Using the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition as a foundation, this deck offers a twist: there is a twenty-third card added to the Major Arcana—The Cosmic Seed, a representative of us all as infinite, cosmic spirits, enmeshed in sacred flesh for a time on this Earth. https://cosmicseedstudio.com www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hey Soulseekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee and open your mind, heart and soul. Today on Sense of Soul, I have Leilania Simone. She is a multi-faceted author, artist, and mystic devoted to a path of liberation and awakening. Her early questioning of religious dogma launched her lifelong spiritual journey and is dedicated to raising the vibration of the planet. Laedlania is one of the co-owners of Alchemy Ritual Goods, a metaphysical store in Denver, and she is joining us today to tell us about one of her new creations, the Tarot of Cosmic

Seed. This diverse deck is her effort to decolonize the Tarot. She removed outdated ideas of the hierarchy with unique imagery and symbolism and an array of people and cultures. And she's with us today to share her very beautiful spiritual tool. Please welcome Leilania. How are you? Excellent. Excellent. Hey, are you in Colorado by chance? I am. I thought so. So am I. Oh, really? Yeah. Where are you in Colorado by chance? I am. I thought so.

So am I. Oh really? Yeah. Where are you? I'm in Aurora. So am I. Shut up. Then we should get together and have some coffee sometime.

You know what? I have a shop in Denver. You should come by. That's what I saw. I mean, which store is it? It's called the Alchemy Ritual Goods. Yes, I want to. I feel like my community is big online because you know, I'm a podcaster, but however, you know, I'm not talking about any of the stuff with my neighbors, for sure. Oh, yeah. Well, then you need to come hang out with us because that's what we do all day long.

Wow. Yes. I love, I love that. I mean, I just have, I have streams of chats going on everywhere, which keeps me company. But you know, I also, someone was telling me I needed to go check out Cosmic Tea, which I haven't yet. So she got her start with us actually. She was our first reader, our first child reader when we opened and she was with us for about a year and a half and then she opened her own spot. She opened during COVID actually, which was interesting. So yeah, that's Elizabeth. She's a brilliant psychic.

By the way, thank you so much for the deck. Oh, you're welcome. I've received it. It's beautiful. I really can't wait to talk to you about this because this is something I'm super passionate about, kind of like, well, first of all, I'm French Creole. So I don't know if that explains a lot. So I'm originally from New Orleans.

I actually have Marie Laveau in my tree. Oh my gosh. Well, you have a very interesting like physical like I wouldn't know. I would not be able to place your ethnic background. There you go. Yeah. You're stunning, stunningly beautiful. Oh, thank you very much.

But you know, that's really funny because prior to me, because I'm a genealogist and actually ancestral healing is my thing. And I studied my own ancestry for almost a decade, like heavily, like when I had a pilgrimage. And prior to that, I used to always get asked, like, what are you mixed with? And I'd be like, what, what do you mean? Like, I knew exactly what it was.

I was French, Italian and Czechoslovakian and that was it. And when I got my DNA test, I was like, what? Like I'm everything. Me too. I have 16 regions of the world. Through everybody's tree that I've worked with, learn about true history and new perspective. And especially researching some of the women in my tree, learning that, wow, we need to reclaim the power of the divine feminine. And we also need to give some of these goddesses a new story. Yeah, because the story was removed, taken away, changed. Yeah, hidden, buried.

Yeah, all of it. And so I feel like your deck, that's what I got from it. Like a reclamation, I'll just say is what I was really truly getting from it. Even just holding it. I was like, I felt this reclaiming of power. I love that. Yes. Yeah. I've goosebumps just saying it. You know what? To begin with, I always like to ask my guests just how they fell into their spiritual journey. I mean, were you born this way? Did you have like a super spiritual family or were you born Catholic like me? Yeah. Um, I was definitely born into a Catholic family.

I went to Catholic school. My mother actually worked for the church. It was during the crack epidemic and everybody I knew was a gang member. I grew up in that energy. There was shootings all around me. There was a lot of death and then we were. Oh yeah. Oh, great. Bloods.

It was, it was raw in my neighborhood. I grew up in the East side. So if you know where, um, five points is. And then, so this is eighties, nineties, right. Very early two thousands. This is pre-internet. And everything that I knew was Catholicism and the streets.

And so it was kind of a safe place. Our school growing up and going to Catholic school, like the nuns really held us in this like crazy madness. And so that was my upbringing, my understanding until I turned 19 and decided to run, not run away, but move with my friend to San Diego, run away from that life. I tried to go to college and I wanted to be a fashion designer and I studied for a while and realized that going to college, when I was one of the only brown faces that I could find was really uncomfortable. And so I left and decided to go to San Diego with my friend. And while there as an artist, I

wanted to draw goddesses. My understanding of goddesses was the history of Greek goddesses. And so as I was painting and doing these things, I wanted some imagery to kind of inspire. And so I went to the library and I accidentally found the goddess religion. And that was my spiritual awakening. Wow, accident. Don't you love that? That's mine's all fell into my lap too. Like, what? So, but as a Catholic, isn't it interesting though, because you're just like, wait, I thought this was all fairy tale. Yes. And I thought it was all damsel in distress. Yes. And it was all, you know, as a Catholic, like the fact that everyone's a sinner is blamed on the feminine, right? Through, through Eve,

right? She did the original sin. And so it's all blamed on the woman for eating the forbidden fruit. So that was something that I was always questioning. I was the one who was like asking the hard questions to the teachers and the priests and, you know, I was also the first female ultra-ser server in my church in a hundred years. And so I was always kind of pushing the boundaries. I didn't know that I was doing that until I discovered the goddess. And then I started like, then I found Deepak and I found all these other things. And I just went into this exploratory phase and I became devoted to awakening

at that young age, So I was probably between 19 and 20. And that's when I started meditating. And so, yeah, that's 30 years ago. Okay. What is the goddess religion? It's like in pre, of any age that we can really have historically, right? This is like Venus of Willendorf devoted to the feminine. Then all of the things that really covered that up afterwards. So it was that kind of history. So I was kind of really upset with Catholicism and Jesus and things for a long time. Like I I had to go through this phase of why I've been tricked. But I've come back around, interestingly enough. I just returned from Greece and I went to these beautiful monasteries in the Mediterranean where Jesus lived. And I had my heart open

to the divine masculine and to the masculine Christ. And so I feel like I've had a reckoning and come full circle. And now I'm able to kind of balance both of the divine feminine and divine masculine within myself in a new way, which is really beautiful and invite that back in without all of the crud that came with it back then. Yeah, that alchemical marriage. There you go. You know, I've been studying the Gnostic Gospels for the past four or five years now. So my eyes have not seen that kind of, you know, vision of Jesus. And now

I too have come back around a little bit, you know, just because I have now instead of running from the masculine, you know, kind of I've allowed that the divine masculine, I've made peace with that because I was too, I was mad and I, and I blamed the masculine energy for it. Right. And it's not the masculine energy. It's that toxic masculine energy, you know, to know the difference and to be able to, like you said, you know, merge them together within yourself. But like you have to walk that divine feminine path, right? To be able to re-empower yourself to realize how sacred it is to even be able to come back and even really examine the masculine in that way and find the opportunity to have the space for yourself.

Like I had to go through Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Isis, and Hothor, and all these other places to then come back to a place where now I actually have space for that. Tell me about how you started your business and how you started making decks. I mean, obviously you're very creative. Yes. I've always been kind of a person who's always making something. I, like I said, I studied fashion design and I did a lot of work with fabrics and fibers for a really long time. But my, my spiritual practice was always there. And long time. But my spiritual practice was always there. And that other business, they just didn't seem to thrive. Like there was always a block. I opened two different brick and mortgages. I had a cafe, I had a boutique, I had all these different things that just

weren't doing it. I started a subscription box business a few years ago called Wavolve Box and it actually did really well and I had subscribers all over the country and even the world for a while before I stopped going outside of the country and it was a spiritual subscription box which was really fun and it was kind of like my gateway to be able to open a shop and once I opened gateway to be able to open a shop. And once I opened Alchemy Ritual Goods with my dear friend Flor Marquez, and then also later my friend Fatima also came in, I had several readings, and two of them by very people I respect very much, one who I mentioned to you earlier who owns Cosmix Tea said that I needed to learn how to read the cards and that that was part of my like energy that was coming in. And this happened a couple

times. So I decided I was going to go ahead and learn them. My first deck was given to me by my mother when I was about 18. And she kind of also left the church when I left the church. I started learning the cards intentionally. It took me, I want to say three to six months, like kind of giving myself to it on a regular basis. And as I was learning them, I couldn't find myself in them. And so I, as an artist, I was like, okay, I'm going to take this on.

And at the time I didn't know how to do Photoshop and I tried a few times to do Photoshop and it's like, this is hard. I'm gonna have to take an actual class and learn how to do this. So I put it off. And then about a year later, my girlfriend Fatima, she showed me how to use Procreate.

And then it was just like the light bulb, literally. It's like, bing, and I went and got myself an iPad and I just started. So I actually learned digital art on this deck. Love this deck. It's gorgeous. Do you have a favorite card? I'm just curious. I probably have a whole bunch. Like I love the nine of, I really love the nine of coins. I love the seven and eight of cups. All of these people really are stock photography, open source photography, public domain. So my daughter is the one person in the deck that is someone in my life and she is the one person in the deck that is someone in my life and she is the messenger of

sorts. Oh really? Okay, I didn't know that. The messenger of sorts. Okay, I have to find it. You know, I, my best friend and I, Mandy, we made a deck too. It's a sense of soul deck, but we actually never published it. And we used almost everybody in our life and I love digital art. So that's something that I've been playing with for for years. But I tell you what, I feel you're kind of inspiring me to finish my deck, but my deck, it wasn't for nothing. And tell me if you went through this. I started having synchronicity and relationship with each card as I made it. You kind of see them unfolding in your life, right? Now you'll have like for me, now I'll have like something happen in my life and I'll be like,

oh, that's the Hankman. Yeah, you know, that's with everything you create, right? I mean, I remember when my dad died, I was making this huge rag rug, you know, and I had like cried on that rug, right? I had, as I did that, I also was doing lots of mantra. So I was really awakening during that time. And when it was time to give it away, I was like, oh my God. Like it had so many memories, you know, attached to it. And thank God it went to someone who I was close to. Okay, good.

Yeah, I know. I love the feminine energy and like the high priestess and that owl. You know, I mean, I bet you, when I show you this card, you remember everything you were going through and why you did everything you did on this card. It felt really good to make a high priestess who kind of looked like me.

I love that. Because that was the card that I probably identified most with. I, you know, I've always, it's always been very important to me to stay humble. I learned very early about the spiritual ego. And that, especially when I got really mad at Christianity and I started learning about other religions, I started feeling like I knew more than other people and that they were still asleep. Yeah. And then I kind of learned about the spiritual ego and was like, oh, you know,

it'll just transfer and be like, hey, you know, I'm still here. I'm just, you know, holier than thou. And so I've always been very careful about identifying with the high priestess, but there is a part of me that feels very connected to it. And so when I found that image, it was like, oh, that is her. We're all connected and we all have these different aspects. We're playing out all of the aspects of source

eventually, right? Yeah. I have a question. The pomegranate on which I assume this is the Bible, is it? I don't know. You know, it is a book of wisdom, really. In the traditional Tartaro, it's the Torah.

But I think that it's the access to the information, the secret information, whatever that is for you. I love that. Because you know, it really doesn't say that Eve ate an apple. The apple is not mentioned at all in the Bible. Another card I'm in love with is, of course course you have the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine and we're just talking about that and my god that to me I mean I get goosebumps. I mean it's beautiful. First of all the hawk is my is my animal and I have so many, just so many amazing spiritual experiences with the hawk.

And a deep connection to birds too. And the rafters specifically are very inspiring. And also the tiny birds. I love the birds. Yeah, I'm a bird person, but the hawk is always over my yard and almost like protecting like the land, even though I know it's probably prowling out for some mice or something. But for me, sometimes it really will just soar and like float, you know, on the air, you know, just right above me. Sometimes I can get like really good pictures. And I actually

did catch a spirit totem on my phone. It's crazy. It's amazing. It's on my TikTok. It's pretty cool. But you know, to honor the natives, you know, this is when I tell you about my ancestry, I had a had a great shaman who was in, he was a First Nation and he's known as the apostate, the shaman who converted to Christianity. And I know a lot of his story because the Jesuits wrote about him in many volumes, but it was a travesty to me that he had to give up his belief system, his practice. And when they would go back to his tribe, they'd yell at him for tent shaking. And knowing his story and giving his story a voice has been a big part of my journey because it's a travesty. It's literally a travesty what people have had to sacrifice. Yeah, it's been a... This place has been held down energetically by beings that are larger than we can imagine for a long time. And, you know, everybody has made the choice,

in my understanding and in my belief, everybody has made the choice to some degree of the incarnation that they have chosen to live through and the learning and the lessons that they had to go through. And then I believe what happens is once we come here, we collect more karma. We wanna come here and we wanna do the best that we can to balance our karma from previous incarnations. But then we come

here and because it's so oppressive, we end up collecting more. So then we have to come back and we have to try to balance more and more. And so we come with the intention of learning these life lessons and going through and balancing these energies that we've collected over time and then pick up a little bit more. And so that's why this idea of ascension is so powerful because it's like the opportunity to really wipe the slate clean, to shift the world on behalf of all of us

who are ready to like move to this next level. And the powers that have been holding us in this cycle are not really interested in losing that power. And so they're fighting with all they have to keep us down. And we're doing all we can to lift. And there's a lot of beings here are very light and are holding, holding energies and frequencies to start bringing and lifting that energy, you know, when you have the higher frequency that you are, you lift the other things

up. It's just naturally, it happens vibrationally with sound, the higher frequency lifts lower frequency. And so the more that people can be in a place of non-judgment and love, the more that they can lift these lower frequencies. The more that we're in fear and judgment, we are contributing to the oppression. And so we are contributing to the oppression. And so it's very simple, but to think about, but it's harder to live it. And when I did my ancestor, that's the one thing I learned was that it wasn't just healing for me. I was he it was a timeless healing. I was healing the ancestors and I was healing my future lineages. And so when you give honor to these women and to the natives and to these different cultures, you are healing them collectively as well. One of them, this right here, and this is just what I'm receiving from her, is a story

receiving from her is a story and a lesson that I've learned through the dark mother. And I'll tell you why. It's so funny how I remember I was telling this one, he was a Gnostic scholar, I believe. And I was saying, I read a lot of Helena Protrovna Blavatsky, 1800s author, founder of the Theosophical Society. And they said, be careful, she's dark. I said, well, that's what they say about all the amazing women of the world, right? Even Marie Laveau, right? Which I mean, her story is right? Even Marie Laveau, right? Which I mean, her story is of a sainted woman. And so it's interesting. The darkness is their greatest power. That is what is being feared the most. The woman's black. They say that Sophia, which is the some will name Sophia as the creator of all life, the feminine, and that she is the black woman from which all form comes. Right.

And so, and that's what it's so funny. So if they fear it, they called it dark, but they feared the power. And so I'm like, no, the dark mother is the most powerful. And yeah, she's been hidden. And I love that there's no face either, because to me, that reminds me of Sophia, is that she is the... There's many, many Sophias, right? The divine feminine is embodied by so many goddesses. She is all of them. The sacred feminine. I love it. Tell me about how you feel about this card and what journey you were going through. And I also love your flower, you know, the sacred geometry down here.

I put the flower of life in the space that would have been her like womb space. It was creation. Yeah, she is the one a loop back. So she is the representation of the mother of Christ. And so that was me kind of like reclaiming the goddess through Catholicism because people, I think, because of the trauma of Christianity and Catholicism have said no to religious icons that have to do with that religion. And so I wanted to reclaim that as something that I could touch into my own history and still have connection through that particular religion and lift her up as the divine feminine, which she really wasn't.

She was relegated to the mother. The grieving mother. Yeah. But she wasn't really celebrated as, you know, equal to. No. You know, and I have, you know, I do this in my book that I'm writing, give to many of the biblical women and Mother Mary story. I don't know if you're familiar, but in the apocryphal text, the Gnostic text is her whole story. You have when she was born.

And I asked my mom, I said, who is St. Anne? And Mary's mother. And who's St. Joachim? She says, her father. I said, how do you know? And she's like, it's in the Bible. I said, no, it's not in the Bible. So how do you think you know? And she's like, well, I don't know. Where is it at then? I said, well, it's in apocryphal text. It's in the Gnostic text.

And coincidentally, it's also in the Quran. And it tells the story of St. Anne who also had an immaculate birth and she was visited, and so is her husband, by an angel saying, you will have a child. And they had been trying forever. And then it talks about how Mary, when she was born, like at six months old, she was doing things like she shouldn't have done. She was like this really super wise baby, but at six months old, she was doing things like she shouldn't have done. She was like this really super wise baby. But at three years old, she had to go live in the temple. They took her and it was the saddest story. I mean, I was so connected to the story as a mother especially.

They prayed for her not to look back because they knew if she looked back as she ascended up these temple stairs, their hearts would just break. They had prayed for her all of those years. And then it talks about how she danced around the temple and she was visited by angels who brought her fruit. And then at 12 years old, all girls have to leave the temple because then they're dirty, of course, they have their period. And it was actually Elizabeth's husband, Zechariah, who is the priest at the time or the rabbi at the time. And he called on all the single men of the city and said, you know, we will be given a sign of who Mary is to Mary and everyone bring your staff and Joseph who was a father of I think like six children and a dove comes in.

One story says it sits on his head. The other says sits on the staff. And there's more to it even from there. But they left this out because I guess I didn't want to have too much information about Mary and how miraculous her life was. And it broke my heart that they hid this. And it also is hilarious that they still acknowledged it by sainting her parents. Right? Secretly sainting.

Oh, I found that it was a lot. I mean, even with Sophia, there is a Saint Sophia, but yet there was no historical proof of a Sophia. They say, you know, she was a martyr. She had three children, hope, charity and love. There was her three children, but there was no proof of. So it's like anytime they feared like Otis Bridget, make her a Saint, right? We'll call her the, you know, Saint Bridid of Kildare. Let's claim her. Yeah. Let's claim her. So they still come to us for worship. Yeah. So reclaiming the power is for me the most important thing that we're doing right now, whether it's the divine masculine, the divine feminine, the land,

the divine feminine, the land, you know, giving voice. And you have so much wisdom, so much wisdom. You it seems like you have a love for the moon as well. And for, you know, the elements. Mm hmm. Absolutely. I feel like I'm I'm constantly. I'm I'm a very solo kind of person, especially because my spiritual path has really been my own. Although I now have a shop and I connect spiritually with many other people, up until that point,

it was a very solo journey. And so interestingly, I've been learning lately about how that's kind of intentional by society to make us these insular, solitary beings. And we're kind of, it's all about your individual experience and it's all about your self-improvement, right? So we're constantly, even our meditation practices are about being in ourselves with ourselves. And I'm learning about the importance of actually meditating to be in connection with the all,

with the earth, with other beings. And I'm in a new place now where I'm being more intentional about connecting with all of the cells in my body, the guardian spirits and my ancestors and my guides in a new way and with what's around me and really honoring the sentience in this atoms of all things. And so there's an expansion happening, which is really interesting. Instead of coming more within, I'm taking what's within and connecting more to the all

and what's without. And it's a new exploration for me right now. I think I'm right alongside you. But you know, it's almost like we had to go in and find that solitude that I just needed to almost be like a newborn. Agreed. And very raw.

I had to be stripped from everything for me to like start regaining it in a more authentic way, which is what I feel from you. And you can't help from when you're outside feeling one with mother earth and one with that tree, you know, and the birds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a beautiful expansion. I think that Yeah, there's a beautiful expansion. I think that, like I've even noticed in the animals, what feels like an expanded consciousness. Maybe it was always there.

Maybe it's just being reflected because that's where I am now, but it feels like everything is aware. Like when you're aware of them and it and plants and it's aware of you, there's a co-resonance I think that happens. Oh, that's so beautiful and so true. Yeah. I know it almost makes me sad to think I walked past, you know, certain trees for so long

and never noticed it. And now it's become my best friend. They're like, there she is again. I remember my daughter, when she was younger, she was like, Mom, look at that eye in the tree. You know, and you might be familiar with the eyes of the Aspen trees. If you look at Aspen, they have eyes. And I did never see it before. And I was like, wow, that's amazing. I mean, I'm taking pictures of it, cause I'm so amazed. And she's like, yeah, it's amazing.

Like, you know, kids just paying attention and as adults trying to go back to that childhood wonder adults trying to go back to that childhood wonder in your deck. There's water and all of the elements and different ages too. That's one thing I've been going through as I move into my crone hood. At first, I was afraid to be able to, you know, and now I've let my hair go gray. I haven't dyed my hair in two years. And I learned I am always that maiden.

I am always the mother and the crone. I have a friend who is same in the same age. And she said something that I thought was really powerful. She was like, there's a place between the mother and the crone. That's where I feel like I am right now. And she said, and I call it Queen being the Queen. And I feel like that feels very resonant because my mother is definitely in her crone hood. And I can feel that.

I can feel that being, you know, the becoming, but I definitely feel that now that I don't have a child in the house and I have, I'm the queen of my domain because I don't have to now worry about taking care of anybody. And so my domain is me and my life in this new way. And I get to decide what that looks like completely. And it's like a rebirth into learning myself without all of the expectations of other people. Yeah.

Not giving an F. Not giving an F. Yeah, it's not giving an F, not giving an F. You know, um, Anadiah Judith. Okay. She told me about that. She also believes in that in between space. And I've also heard other people call it the wild. There's a wild woman. Oh, I love that.

Me too. Because it's like empowered, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to be able to really go into that raw aspect of yourself with wisdom. Yeah. I just got a sign. I haven't framed it yet, but it says a woman's place is wherever the fuck she wants it to be. Yeah, I can't wait to frame it. It's going to be great. But you know, someone asked me the other day if I believed that all of all the men that you've slept with your whole life or, you know, if you carry their trauma and even their ancestors trauma and all that, how do you feel about that? I feel like

we carry a lot of the things that we've interacted with and that's so intimate. But I don't think that it's a forever thing. I think it depends on if you are conscious about the fact that that just like any other thing that has happened can be cleared. Like there's a cleaning, energetic cleaning that, you know. So I have another deck, I don't know if you know, it's called the Oracle Awakening and it's an Oracle deck specific

to the process of awakening. And one of the cards is called clearing. And it talks about essentially spiritual hygiene. But yes, I believe we carry a lot from our experiences. And something so intimate into the womb space is definitely has a possibility of leaving energy. I do a practice where I use a black obsidian dagger and I use it like I'm shaving. Yeah. Because there's, I believe there's tiny, like there's the big cords that were like, oh, I got to cut this cord with this person. But then there's the tiny, tiny thread, hair-like cords connect us to all of our experiences that are remembered and remembered. And so occasionally I'll just take that and I'll just do it along my whole body.

I'm shaving all of these tiny cords so that I can continually release all of these stories and aspects of myself that don't serve me. And then I will follow that with a solonite, right, because that's like the healing like seals. And so that's a practice that when I feel like, okay, it's time for me to like be attentive to things that maybe were impacting me from the past. Look at this bad boy. That's a good one. That's like a big, it's like a lightsaber. Yes. Star Wars. good one. That's like a big, it's like a lightsaber. Yes.

Star Wars. I use black kyanite as for when I cut cords. Yes. Wow, I love the shaving though. That's beautiful. So what kind of what are the different practices that you do? Really? Meditation is probably my biggest practice. I work with certain plant medicines. I do candle work. If I was to say that I do anything, it's candle work.

I'm not necessarily too witchy in that way. Like I'm not a small person. I think there's a lot of different ways to work with, person. I think there's a lot of different ways to work with, to work with all of these different energies. And some of them are, you know, working with the elements and, and herbs and all of these different things that people choose. I consider myself more just generally spiritual. And, but I do use candles. So candles, the way that I think about it is you have an intention, it's floating around in your mind, or a desire or a worry or whatever it is, and you can bring it out into the world by putting the

intention in a candle and we're exchanging molecules with everything all the time. So when you breathe it into the candle or speak into the candle, you've actually already brought it into the world. And then you activate it, activate it with fire. And so I'll carve into my candles, the things that I'm thinking or wanting to work or put the candle on an intention or different ways to bring it into the world and then activating it with fire.

So that could be like to release or to bring in. So that is probably like the practice that would be more on the witchy side. Oh, come on. It's very Catholic. Yeah, I guess that's true. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like going lighting candle, right? It is so funny how so many of those things are connected to religions. I mean, like, you know, the herbs, you know, frankincense and, you know, the chanting, right?

And there's so many. It's like, that's why it's hard for me to, it's just, it's okay if you do it, but not me. Just because I don't call it sacrament or whatever, baptism or- Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny, but yet we're all trying to reach the same absolute source. You know, and how can there only be one one direction? You know, what is that one song? My own personal Jesus, you know, I love that song.

Now I love it even more. But even, you know, Jesus has, you know, in the Gnostic Gospels, he's so like a Buddha. He's like a Zen master and all of his allegorical stories. And the person who is the most active in the conversations is Mary Magdalene. I mean, she was extremely intelligent and Peter had a lot of beef with her and I've got a lot of beef with Peter. Yeah I did. I've read some of her gospels. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that that was a, he was jealous. She obviously was, if not his greatest student, his equal. Yeah, I think they were. They were that right, but the times wouldn't have been able to recognize that because of the the patriarchy was so solid. But you know, rabbis had wives, you know, I find it just very interesting how even she became a prostitute because I mean she was never a prostitute. And that's the times that they were written were not during their lifetimes. Yeah, hundreds of years later.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm Mary's book in the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Mary that was found in several different places throughout different times. So that gives it so much credibility, you know, like it was circulating, it was being read and, you know, not just found in one jar, you know, it was, you know, different places. I find that to be pretty amazing. And yeah, reclaiming her power as a wise teacher, like that divine feminine, like a Sophia.

And just, I think it was not long ago, where the church actually admitted that she wasn't a prostitute, and they called her the apostle, or Jesus's greatest apostle, something like that or his greatest disciple. And I see that the church is also evolving. It's still so powerful though, but I think that they're like afraid right now because so many are awakening and women have found their voice. Yeah, absolutely. That's the times when we're in

for sure that it's really interesting time to be alive. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, you can keep your head about you. Yeah, you know, really, that's like the what the Buddhist say, walk the middle path where you're not going too far one way or the other. I try to hold space for both. It's kind of like what you were saying how you grew up. You were holding space for two spaces in your life, you know? And still probably in a loving way. I'm sure that you loved your neighborhood as much as you loved your church. And you know, it's kind of like that polarity where I was just saying about the dark mother,

who is really the most light. Yeah, yeah. Such an interesting time. What do you hope that people get from your deck? I mean, like, what's your intentions and, and your hope that people learn through it? Because I feel like there's a lot of wisdom here. Like, you could really learn a lot through this deck. It's not just a tarot deck. Well, one of the things I did was take out all of the royalty so that it became something that people could relate to. So we don't have emperor and empress. We don't have pages, knights, queens and kings. We have the energy of that. So the king was representing the mastery of that particular elemental energy, which was the cups. I made the king of cups, actually the feminine, it's a female and she's the mastery of cups because the feminine is the master of water and also the earth, whereas the masculine is the master of fire and air,

which would have been the wands and the swords. And so it's relatable. It has some esoteric elements to it, and there's some magical energy in there and I want people to be able to find themselves in there and see themselves. I try to represent people and cultures from all over the world. Different times, different time periods. Yes. Yeah, it's got everything. I really, really appreciate it.

And I also very much appreciate that you took out the patriarchal systems, you know, and, and there's a lot of feminine energy in this and the masculine energy that I get from it is the divine masculine. So I'm wanting to bring in the animal kingdom as well. Um, so it's not all people. Yeah. Yes. Love the wolves. My daughter went through a wolf phase. Did you guys in Aurora or in your side of Aurora? Did you guys do the howling at eight o'clock? Yes, I was actually in Gumber during that time. And yes, we were we were howling every eight o'clock.

Isn't that so nice? It was really my daughter too, she was 15, 14 or 15 during that time. And so yeah, that was exciting. You know, they didn't do that everywhere. Cause when I would share that with people I would talk to, they were like, wow, that's amazing. They didn't do it everywhere. Yeah. That was created by some mothers or wives of essential workers here in Denver, in Colorado. I didn't know that. But I mean, what a beautiful thing because it was like that pack mentality that is natural in us to want to be with each other. You know what I mean? Also like a way to acknowledge these essential workers who were working and at eight o'clock,

wherever they were, they were being acknowledged by this whole city of people who would go outside and help. That is so amazing. Thank you so much. I mean, actually, I do want to ask you one more question. The cosmic seed. Why did you choose that name? When I first heard the word the cosmic seed, it was through some Mayan, a system of Mayan astrology that my partner at the time was connected to. And when he said the word cosmic seed, I felt very, like awakened by that. I felt like, yes, a seed in the cosmos, it's like intention. It's like,

you know, the potential for a seed has the potential for so much. And so I very much took to that. And I was going to originally call the tarot the tarot, the cosmic eye. And the first edition of it had an eye on the back and there's eyes throughout. You'll see, you know, as you're looking through it, they're just kind of here and there. Yeah. And then someone else that was a group reached out to me and said that they were the cosmic eye tarot. And this was like a week before I was launching my Kickstarter. Oh my God, you're kidding. The only thing that really felt like it resonated was the cosmic seed. And I'd been calling myself that for a long time.

And I was like, I'm not sure if I should do that. No one's going to really know what that means. And I decided to go with it. And now I'm so glad I did. It feels like it suits it so much. Love this one, by the way. The mastery, she would be the, normally would have been the king of cups. And she's got a little bullfrog next to her.

Yes, that is part of some of the reference to the frog. The frog is very secret. Oh, and what is your Instagram? Tell everybody so that they want to follow you as well. And then also your your website so my Instagram for my deck is the dot cosmic seed and My shop is alchemy ritual goods and My website is lalemy Ritual Goods and my website is Lelaniasimone.com. Awesome. You are the Cosmic Seed. You are the Cosmic Seed.

You are. You are definitely. It's very beautiful. This deck is very beautiful. And what's the name of your other deck as well? I have the Oracle of Awakening that came out about a year after the original Cosmic Seed came out. And then Red Wheel and Wiser is releasing my next deck, which is called the Wise Earth Tarot, which is all nature-based. It's plants, animals, and insects, and each card will have the traditional tarot meaning, but also an oracle-like medicine associated with that animal or plant. Well, that's coming out in May.

I'm super excited about that one. Wow. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, they sent me this one. But I didn't know about your other one. That sounds amazing. Well, if you want to come back on, you're more than welcome to. I would love to. Yeah. Very cool.

All right. Well, maybe we could even do it in person. That'd be amazing. Oh, that's a great idea. That'd be fun. All right. Well, you take care. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It's been lovely to chat with you and connect with you.

And I look forward to seeing you outside. I can't wait to. All right. Many blessings. Many blessings to you too. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. And thanks to our special guest. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at SenseofSoulPodcast.com. It's time to awaken.