Sense of Soul - Wisdom and Psychology found in Mythology

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul we have Letao Wang, an accomplished astrologist and tarot specialist, is the founder and spiritual counselor of the Healing Kingdom. Since 2015, he has served clients both in his local city of Hong Kong and internationally, offering insights through astrology, tarot, and numerology readings. Alongside this, he pens the astrology column for the well-known Hong Kong Living Magazine. Today he joined us to share his  epic journey of understanding, strength, and ancient wisdom through his new deck, Oracle of the Mythic Heroes. Following each myth in the guidebook are real-life examples from the author’s spiritual counselling sessions and an exploration of the card’s teaching, helping you to interpret and apply the heroes’ historical lessons to your own life. Supplemental information such as the astrological planet, decan, and crystal are also included to give you more insight into each hero’s divine message. The beauty of this deck is how it moves beyond the worship of deities and offers a more humanistic approach to interpreting the guidance of the ancient realm. Take this as an invitation to expand your divination practice with Oracle of the Mythic Heroes and strengthen your connection to your inner hero or heroine.  https://www.thehealingkingdom.com www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Li Tao Wang. He's an accomplished astrologist and tarot specialist. He is the founder and spiritual counselor of Healing Kingdom. He has served clients both

in his local city of Hong Kong and internationally, offering insights through astrology, tarot, and numerology readings. Alongside this, he pens the astrology column for the well-known Hong Kong Living Magazine. But he's joining us today to tell us about his new Oracle deck, Oracle of the Mythic Heroes. It's an amazing deck that I personally have, which includes a guidebook and real-life examples from his spiritual counseling sessions and his exploration of the card's teachings, helping you to interpret and apply the hero and heroine's historical lessons to your own life. This beautiful deck moves beyond the worship of the deities, but offers a more humanistic approach to interpreting the guidance of the ancient realm.

I'm excited to talk about some mythology, which I haven't done a lot of. So this is sure to be an exciting conversation. Hi, hello, Shanna. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Very good. Yeah. Thank you very much for having me today. I'm so excited to learn more. And your cards are just beautiful. When did you get my bag?

You know, I got him a few weeks ago. There's so much information in here. And, you know, this is kind of a divine timing for me, too, because I've been studying the Gnostic Gospels for some time now and religion I also I can tell that you have a love for history actually it's very interesting because yeah a lot of the mythological stories are for the biblical stories yeah right and we do learn a lot from the the religious books as well yeah that so crazy. And I would love for you to talk more about that if you would. Through my podcast, I've learned so many things from so many people, but I've not had a lot of people talking about mythology. And all of a sudden, I'm getting all of these guest requests for mythology. And I'm like, okay, this is where I'm moving into right now. I love how that is.

I don't know about in your life, but synchronicity, I just follow it. And it seems to always align with my journey. Yeah, absolutely. So the whole foundation of astrology is about synchronicity, right? Astrology is about as above, so below, as within, so without. So it's basically talking about whatever that is happening in the celestial realm is synchronized with what is happening on the earth yeah and that's why as human we can look at someone's chart or we can look at the position

of the planet at that very moment and to understand what is happening in the world. Hey, wow. And you know what? Seems like there's something going on. You know, it's almost as if we've moved into a higher dimension. There seems to be a lot of shifting. I don't know. I almost feel like collectively. I don't know. I just feel like maybe before we were in 3D and stepping into 4D in and out our day.

But now it seems like we're having Pluto finally move into Aquarius after 10, 15, 20 years. I think about 15 years is spent in the Capricorn. And Pluto is going to stay in Aquarius for the next 20 years, basically. And it's kind of interesting, right? Because Pluto doesn't change signs very um very often and so we are seeing this very um high level energy shift from one sign to another and pluto is all about secrecy power struggle you know transformation birth and death and rebirth are we in the age of aquarius they made songs about this back in the 70s. So are we finally in there? You hear people saying yes, no, maybe so. Well, yeah.

Well, pretty much Pluto entering Aquarius is a big sign for us. It's about the official start of the age of Aquarius, actually. And around, I think, maybe end of January, right? So usually the sun moves into Aquarius around January the 20th, 21st, you know, around those days, sometimes the 19th, depending on the year. And so we're seeing this conjunction between sun and Pluto. And on those days, the energy was very, very intense, actually, because the sun is about our ego, how we see ourselves, right? That's a life source. And Pluto was this, the opposite energy was the death right because

pluto in roman mythology was a god of um the underworld the darkness um the the secret the secrecy right the power struggle right so you're seeing the light and the darkness conjunct together on those days and that to me that's the the official if we have to find a day yeah to say okay now the age of Aquarius has started, I think that was a very important day. And on that day, it was very funny because I was looking at the sun, right? Because I knew, of course, we can't see Pluto, right? But we can see where the sun is.

And I was just thinking, okay, so right now, Pluto is right behind the sun, right? If we're looking at the planets in one line, right? The so-called two planets in conjunction, basically meaning that they're aligned. Yeah. And it was very weird because on that day, the weather was great. It was a beautiful day,

but somehow I just felt there was some kind of darkness there. So you know what I mean? I was feeling that behind all this light that I see in the sky, there is that eye and the moon was in the left eye yeah and i did not have to move my head and it was a waning crescent moon and the sun was like crowning it and i just so much was like oh you know like oh my god i get it like it has to be in line there can't be one without the other yeah and then all of a sudden a white dove flew above my head and i took a picture of it i was just like so flipped you know when you have these moments with nature which is like such a teacher i mean it was the most divine moment

so i understand what you're talking about yeah Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think thousands of years ago, we have already been doing all these things, right? In the old days, that's how the farmers knew when to plant the seeds, right? They will observe the sky and they will know, okay, now we need to do the harvesting. We need to do the planting. And next month, we probably will have the flooding, right? So let's fix the dam, right? Or maybe in two years' time, we're're gonna have a solar eclipse maybe in leo so we're concerned about the king's health right would the king die when the solar eclipse happens right so you know it sounds

yeah thousands of years yeah i think as human we have been building this very um a close intimate relationship with the sky um it's actually these days we we do less right because in a funny way i think humans have become more arrogant in a way that we believe that what the sky has nothing to do with me and i can control the sky like for example with technology right let's say well okay we don't have enough rain okay i can make rain right because i have a plane i have technology i have all the material but so you know and i think maybe one of the things i would wish as an astrologist and a professional working in this field i would really hope that we can rebuild our this respectful relationship you know between us and the sky yeah because because we're so busy we you know we don't notice

and when I became aware in my journey I mean it was always looking up and I had this conversation with someone recently where she had told me that most people only see in front of them like the majority of people they don't't look up. And we were laughing because it's the first thing I do when I go outside. And so I always see a lot of things in the sky, you know, whether it's birds, or like I said, the experience with the moon. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And it just goes to show you how unconscious we're living. Well, I think, you know, for example, in schools, right, I really hope that we could have this type of education a little bit more.

You know, when do we ever learn about, you know, synchronicities and spirituality in school? We never learn about those things. No wonder we're not aware. Right. And of course, our parents don't talk about these things. So if we grow up in the environment where nobody's talking about them, then we have no idea about what the sky is, except for knowing, oh, we're gonna shoot another rocket to the moon or whatever. To be honest, I'm not a very big fan of shooting stuff onto the moon, onto the Mars. Of course, in my view, might also not be very valid but it's just my personal opinion i feel that you know there are so many problems that we need to solve on the earth if we have the money and resource to shoot something onto the moon why can't we save the sick children save the earth right stop the war right why can't we move our

resources into those fields rather than oh we need to find some treasure on the moon we need to i know agree align this part of the moon is mine you know what i mean that part of the mars is yours you know that's just really ridiculous you know you can imagine the aliens the aliens living so far away from us right they're watching that they're like look at those little people fighting over look at these these stupid people. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares? I mean, the whole earth is a dust floating in the nowhere of the universe. And you guys are fighting over whether this island is mine or not.

It's just it's sad. Right. In the big picture, it's so stupid. It truly is. So I also was, you know, studying. One of the things I was writing recently was on Mother Mary and the story of the Virgin. And as I was learning about the stories that have been untold about Mary, which were in apocryphal text and also in the infancy text and also in the Quran, which all tell the story of her mother, her father, and her as a child. I thought about the perpetual virgin and thought this is not so unique to her.

It's like her story, actually, which was very unique, that was not included in the Bible. But her being a virgin is not as unique as people think. This has been told over and over throughout many myths. Yeah, a lot of myths have similar figures, right? A virgin woman and then they receive some kind of, I don't know, magic or instruction or whatever from the universe and they become pregnant, right? So definitely in Greek and Roman mythology, we see that a lot. Actually, most children by Zeus, to be honest, were born from a mother whom Zeus didn't really have physical sex with. You know, either he became the shower from the sky, the water, and then the woman becomes a

pregnant. It's a little bit like that. So that's quite similar. Even the story of Sophia in the Gnostic Gospels, she could also be considered a virgin giving birth to the demiurge. So there's a lot of the stories in the Bible, I would say, you can reference to the stories that I found in mythology. Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, is kind of a problem when one starts doing some history and, you know, starts going down the paths and reading. Because you're like, wow, this sure does sound like Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I need to actually do more study about biblical studies, actually. Yeah, I haven't done much. I've read some stories, but yeah, that's definitely something that I'd like to explore in the future. Like Dionysus, he has a very, very similar story to Jesus. Like how he came into the world, you know, how he ended up dying and yeah, the rising, it has to do with the sun. Oh yeah, yeah. Dionysus, yeah, do with the sun. Yeah, yeah. Dionysus, yeah, the god of wine.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was one of the 12 Olympians. Because his mother was not Zeus' wife, right? So when he was born, Zeus had to hide him. You know, and Zeus' wife, Hera, was very angry with his child because she felt you had an affair with a different woman. And now the woman is giving birth to a child i'm not gonna allow that to happen so dionysus was born you know and was

kind of like in an unfortunate way and also he was raised as a girl because you know his his mother didn't want people to find out about him right so that's why when you see a lot of the ancient statues of dionysus he looked very androgynous. So in the most Greek god, they are older men, they have a beard, and they look quite masculine. But Dionysus is a very youthful looking boyish man, basically. Long hair, sometimes flowers on his head. So that's because of his childhood. Yeah.

It was a very funny story. Dionysus doesn't have a lot of stories in Greek mythology, but he tend to play a very supportive role. Yeah. In them. Yeah. Did they model even the look of Jesus then? Because you know how Jesus has like this look, you know, that you were just kind of describing but isn't it more common that the women would have been like Mulan or whichever Disney character was treated like masculine

rather than you know vice versa well I think you know Mulan was a you can say that's well that's actual real history anyway uh well actually she did exist in Chinese history. And it was because traditionally speaking, Chinese society was very, very patriarchal, especially back then, right? So for a woman to dress like a man to go to the battlefield and to fight on behalf of her father and her brother was very, you know, was a very noble deed. And so that was i think that was a very special right about it and like for example i think in western society let's say europe right i mean many countries they have queens right you know so it doesn't really matter you know whether you have a boy or a girl if you give birth to a girl the girl eventually become the queen for the royal family but in asia like

china and japan um generally speaking females females were not allowed to be the heir. You have to give birth to a son, and the son becomes a king. And if it's a female, then eventually you will have to marry into someone else's family and take their family name. And so again, Mulan's existence

was very inspiring, right? It was showing the strengths of femininity at that time but you know the interesting thing is in the disney movie they did a little bit change about the actual story they added this male character who mulan fell in love with and i kind of feel like that destroyed the purpose because the whole purpose was you're right yeah was like an independent woman. She didn't really need to be with a guy but the whole Disney movie was about

her. She became a man and then she became a woman again. She became a man when she went to the battlefield but when she met the guy, then her inner little girl will be like, oh, I want to be in love with that guy. That's kind of funny to see that in the Disney movie.

But that male figure was never really in Chinese history. Wow. You know, and a lot of those stories could even be compared to, like, can you think of any that are, you know, close to Greek mythology or some of those? You mean of a female character? Some of the, you know know fairy tales that we've grown up with that maybe we didn't even realize you know it started you know probably there are

a lot yeah it might be a lot yeah i can't think of anything uh off the top of my head but uh i mean in greek mythology i would say a lot of the time the gender are quite fluid um you know there's a lot of magic and transformation right happening you know okay so yeah wow you know and you know and most of these are also i feel like they're archetypes right and would you say that some of these as you know even many of the ones that are in your deck could also be like you could find them in other mythology but under a different name or even in like other religions like in india yeah i think yeah to be honest i mean as astrologers right we have to because mythology is basically um the base of astrology or vice versa and so when we study the night sky, people from different culture,

we tend to find similar archetypes through the sky. Like for example, in Roman mythology, we have the goddess of love, Venus. In Greek mythology, we have the goddess of love, Aphrodite. And in Indian mythology, we have the goddess Ishtar. And it's very interesting because when you really study these stories, and for example, in Indian mythology, the story of Ishtar was she descended into the underworld, right? And so it was a little it comes to dealing with relationships. Like, for example, one of my experiences with clients, if let's say a client has a very tight Pluto and Venus opposition on their nature chart, sometimes their emotional life is too intense. I don't know if you know that kind of people. It's a little bit like either it's zero or 100. I don't like 50%. And that's why for them, when they're dating, they're very extreme. It's a little bit like, you know, even after two days, they're already thinking, you know, why are you

seeing other girls, right? You know, you are not serious about me you know you know you're not committed and but you know in this counseling session sometimes I ask them but only after two days how do you expect someone to be committed to you and to be a hundred percent they don't even know you and also vice versa you don't know them either so where is this intense emotion come from when you feel that oh but you know he's not replying to my messages he's not talking to me so it's a little bit like you started to see similarities in this stuff as you started to work with people and started to read their charts yeah this is also the synchronicities right between different cultures and different mythology and also because my background is Chinese,

so we study Chinese astrology as well. And you can also see the similarities between Chinese astrology and modern Western astrology, sometimes also with Vedic astrology. Wow, don't you love that? How they all just kind of fit together if you compare them two? Because I just recently learned more about, I've been kind of digging into the Chinese astrology. I had somebody on recently and I was just very curious, probably even more curious about Chinese astrology than I've ever

been about Western astrology. And I think it was because me and my kids we all like talked about what we were and we were i was like god that you that is so right on and you know it's the year of the dragon i'm a dragon oh okay i'm a fire dragon though okay okay and i'm also a snake for my month. But, you know, I have a daughter who's a dragon dragon. Oh, wow. You have a lot of dragons at home. This is your very important year for your family. My mom's a dragon too. Oh, God.

This is a very intense year for your family. A lot of. This is your year, your family year. Yeah. Okay. Well, hopefully in a good way i mean isn't the dragon luck well when it's your own year right usually um this is what we say in chinese astrology when it's your own year let's say you're a dragon and you you experience a year of dragon

yeah this year we say that you are having a clash with the tai sui and they're generally speaking four animal signs clashing with the Taisui. So dragon is one of them and there are other three. But there's a difference, the so-called clashing with Taisui. Taisui is a divine god from Chinese mythology. And every year it's almost like he will change his seating. So this year he's sitting in the seat of a dragon, next year he will move into the seat of snake. So's a little bit of this imagine it's a chinese a restaurant right we all have this kind of round round table and you keep changing seats it's a little bit like that so so the tai sui when the tai sui is sitting in dragon basically that means you are sitting together with tai sui where tai sui is sitting

on your head because you're a dragon now he's he's on he's on you you know it's a little bit like that and so what does that mean it's not necessarily saying that it's bad luck. It just tells you that now all eyes are on you because you are sitting with a Tai Sui. So a lot of people will find it either stressful or they find it too much pressure, you know, because as human beings, I think innately we're all a little bit lazy. We don't want to take that responsibility, right right if the whole table is waiting for me to make that decision then i don't like it i feel i'm being pressured you know i don't want to be the one only one responsible you guys should also be responsible you know and so it's a little bit like that so this year for dragon people it could be a very rewarding period of time actually if you're

willing to take the responsibility and so that's usually when we say, when it's your year, what it means when you say you clash with a Taisui because Taisui is you. You are the Taisui. It's everyone looking at you. Well, I can tell you so far, I've had opportunities like I have never had in my life. And it is moving into an uncomfortable place

that I'm not used to, but I'm up for the challenge and I'm excited. Yeah, exactly. That's how you deal with your own year. 100%. Yeah, but I am a little worried about my daughter being a dragon dragon now. You need to worry too. I mean, all her classmates are dragons too.

So I don't think it's really a big deal. There are millions of you know 11 years old out there right so yeah all eyes are on her but so tell me about the muses muses um well in greek mythology actually muses um they they were never the main main you know uh uh character right on the stage okay they usually play a very um let's say um uh supportive role in the stories and one of the most important uses actually in greek mythology her name is uh callilope she was uh you can say she's a goddess as well yeah but you know most stories would depict her as a muse and she plays um she you

know was uh the goddess uh not sorry the muse of music music and poetry and she was also the mother of one of the most famous musician orpheus so we see this very positive and beautiful image of uh muses right like callilope but we also see very interesting and negative images of muses for example um echo echo was a very uh more more or less like the negative side of a muse because she fell in love with narcissus but narcissus wouldn't respond to her yeah so the whole story about that was echo was a little bit like a noisy person yeah she she talks too much and so so the goddess Hera disliked her. So Hera cursed her and said, from now on, all you can say is other people's echo. So you won't be able to say your own words. You can only repeat what other people are saying. So she was cursed, right? And because

she offended the goddess Hera. And she fell in love one day she saw narcissus um you know in the bush and she fell in love with him but she couldn't say anything when narcissist said who who is it you know because he heard something behind him yeah and all echo can say was who is it you know she was only able to repeat what narcissist was saying and in psychology you should i actually just published an article about this with a spiritual magazine. In our daily modern day counseling, we actually see this as a sign of lacking communication. So the fact that Echo was only able to repeat what other people were saying was because she couldn't really voice her own truth. She couldn't say what she wanted to say.

And that's why the relationship between her and narcissists didn't work out. And so in our daily life, it's a little bit like a couple having problems in their relationships because they couldn't communicate their truths. Or maybe they have very self-imposed censorship on what am I supposed to convey? Am I supposed to say I i want attention am i allowed to tell people that i need love or am i just being needy right and i don't want to sound needy so maybe i shouldn't tell my partner that i need this so when you study mythology that the real essence of that is really about how you can apply that into our modern day counseling rather than, oh, that's an interesting story, finish. This is exactly like what I was saying that I've learned through my journey

was that there's a story within a story within a story. Yeah, 100%, yeah. I think in the biblical sense it's true, right? I mean, I haven't read a lot, but there's one story in the biblical sense that I was really touched by. It's a story about job from the Bible, actually. So, you know, sometimes a lot of people would say, you know, maybe they're going through a difficult time and they tend to rationalize it in a way that they will say, what did I do wrong, right? What did I do wrong to deserve this? You know, I've always been a good

person. I've always, why do I have to suffer from this is unfair to me, right? And this job story was a very good explanation actually to that. Basically, you know, the whole story about job was the God and the devil were having a discussion. The devil was saying, well, you know, job has been a good man. He respects you. He worships you only because you have been nice to him, right? You gave him a beautiful wife. You gave him a beautiful family, beautiful children, a lot of money. Of course, he will worship you, right? But if you take everything away from him, he will worship me.

He will say, oh, God does not work. God does not exist, right? You know, it's been unfair to me. So, yeah, do you want to bet on this? I bet I will tell you, right? If you take everything away from Job, he will stop worshiping you and he will disrespect you.

And God said, let it happen. Take whatever you want from him and let's see how he behaves. And that's what happened later. He lost his wife and he lost his home because of a big fire. He lost all his children and his money. He just became, you know, at the age of 50 or 60, he lost everything. But still,

he never lost a faith. He never really cursed God. He never said, you know, oh, you know, the universe is unfair to me. Why do I have to suffer? And I really think that Job Story tells us one thing. It's about suffering. It's about human suffering, right? Suffering does not have to be a result of something. Sometimes we tend to see that as a result. I did this. That's why this happened. That's why I deserve this. This is happening, but I didn't do anything wrong, so I shouldn't suffer. And if I'm suffering, then I cannot reconcile that. And I think job story is telling us that sometimes suffering is just a normal human experience. Just like when we are having a great time, we do need to find a reason behind that. When life is going really well for us, we don't have to think that, oh, what did I do well to deserve this happiness?

We just enjoy the happiness. And we tend to think that, oh, I'm lucky. This is great, right? This is a good time for me, great year for me. But when things are not going well, we tend to go very deep in our mind and thinking why. Well, sometimes there are reasons for sure. Sometimes there are no reasons. Sometimes suffering is just a normal human experience that as a human being, we're born into this life. It's just meant to be something we have to experience

and have to learn. And through that experience that we understand how we control or how we work with our inner emotion yeah i think you know that's a very interesting biblical story to be honest yeah yeah i love that so much you are so wise so i mean thank you this yeah but you know what i mean i'll tell you i've definitely gotten wiser to learning about ancient wisdom. I feel like a lot of it's been hidden for so long. And so one of the things I love about what you've done here is made a deck to be able to teach this through also your personal stories or examples, as well as the history of each of these heroes and heroines.

And I pulled a card earlier for myself, and I just wanted to share with you what it was, because I found it was very interesting. And I like to get to know each of the cards just by pulling a card every day. So I pulled sirens. What I found was interesting about the card that stuck out to me first, well, first there's three feminine, and I didn't know who they were at first until I read your book. But I also noticed that they have the animal feet

or the goat feet or maybe it's, well, yeah, some sort of goat feet. And then you look at some of the goddesses they'll show art with ah this animal feet you know i i forget which one i don't know if it was ishtar actually sirens are not goddesses they're monsters they're monsters oh god you're kidding me sirens inirens in Greek mythology were monsters eating human flesh. So they were beautiful women. Yeah, I read that. What they do is they will sing beautiful songs, right? To lure sailors in and to cause a shipwreck. And once a shipwreck happens,

that's not very good. They will eat them. Yeah, they will. Yeah. So sirens was, they were not god, they were very vicious. They were not, they're very vicious. Okay. So what does that mean for me then? I pulled this word. So you see the story, the car's keyword is called a cleanse, right? I know. I thought that was good.

In Greek mythology, there were two very famous stories related to the sirens. And the first one was Jason and the Argonauts. When Jason went on his journey, you know, to fetch the golden fleece on the way back, he had to pass through this area on the ocean. And that's where the sirens live. And when he approached the sirens, of course, the sirens started to sing and all the male sailors on the boat lost their consciousness, right?

Because they were, you know, basically under the magic of sirens. Mesmerized. They didn't know what they were doing. They were like, oh, such beautiful, you know, songs, you know, okay, let's just go to, let's just go there, right? And then at this very dangerous time,

one of the guys whose name was Orpheus on the boat, which I mentioned earlier, he was a son of Kelilope, right? The muse of music and poetry. He came onto the deck and he said, okay, let me play a song. So he played this beautiful song with his lyre in his hands.

And this beautiful music actually drowned the voices of sirens. So everyone came back to their consciousness and they realized, oh, okay, now we gotta walk away from this. So that was the first story. And the second story was with Odysseus. Also during his journey, he encountered the sirens

and he told his sailors to bind him on the pillar, right? And said, you know, do not let me move. And everyone, please put wax into your ears so that you can't hear the voice, right? So those are the two interesting stories about sirens. And when you read the story, you understand the reason why sometimes things are not going well. It's because we let the siren's voice distract us. Siren's voice is about the people around us. They're saying this, saying that, and they're using their sweet voices to allure you

into something that might lead you astray. So that's why the keyword of this card is called cleanse. It tells you that sometimes it's important to listen to your own inner voice, play your own song, rather than being distracted or lured by the so-called siren's beautiful songs. So this is up to us to judge what are we being distracted by. Wow. Okay, so it's the last card in your deck as well.

Absolutely, yeah. So this is one of the lunar creatures, the four lunar creatures. So if you look at the guidebook, the first 36 chapters was about the heroes, the mortal hero stories and heroines. And the final four chapters, they are the lunar cycle creatures in Greek mythology. They're Medusa, Sirens, and there's a Sphinx and also the Divine Pegasus. Yeah. I really think that this, that could be very, very interesting for people who are into mythology. And who also are interested in learning life lessons from storytelling. And I also like to see things from a different perspective. You know what I mean?

Like the fall of Sophia, right? The fallen angel and mean? Like the fall of Sophia, right? The fallen angel and the story of the fall of Sophia and she falls into the darkness. And it's almost like this damsel in distress kind of thing that is often told about women to kind of shift it and make a new story. And be it in a more empowering way and like reclaiming the power. I felt the same way about Lilith. You know, the story of Lilith and,

you know, I, I, you know, I actually had a conversation with a rabbi about this. He's like you need to reclaim Lilith for the feminine there's oftentimes this archetype of a feminine goddess and there's always this dark side there's always this darkness there's luring and you know or this even luring with sexual energy. Yeah, everything has that, you know, the dark side and the good side, right? I mean, even in every mythological figure, we can see even the god and goddesses, to be honest. And that's why Greek mythology is so fascinating because the gods, they're different from the religious god.

The religious gods are omnipotent. There's nothing bad about them. They're a god, 100%, you must respect, you must bow. In Greek mythology, every god and goddesses, you can see them as a human being because there are amazing things that they do, but they're also, they can be very jealous. They can be very vindictive like Hera, right? And they can be sometimes be very arrogant. Well Zeus is sometimes very arrogant and that's not something that we want to be so yeah so that's i think that's the reason why greek mythology is so fascinating because even when you read the stories of god and goddesses it's not about them being

perfect but it's more about them it's exactly the same as us and so this comes back to the initial concept that we talked about as above, so below. If we as human beings live this way, this is how we naturally behave. And that's how we sometimes being, let's say selfless and sometimes selfish. Then in the sky, there's also the time when the sky is being extremely divine and uncompassionate towards us and sometimes they're also cruel bring natural disasters wow so i love that you put like cleanse on a card that was full of these witchy angels you know what else i find interesting is that during my Sophia journey, and I mentioned in my book, and what I learned was about the liar. Because there's the story of King David,

who before he was a king, he was just a shepherd that would play the liar and King Saul would have him come and play it and it would create like this, I think of it as some sort of, you know, field of energy that was protecting him and cleansing him and keeping him so i looked up what was up with the liar and it's like they mimic the sulfasio frequencies interesting you find it in all history actually even like her you know he had a liar i mean there's a lot of this liar stuff i'm gonna get myself a liar i have one actually yeah i just need to learn how to play that yeah i do and the other yeah yeah yeah i think you know when you when you like where you really feel very uh close to

a divine figure right and i think it's important that you also carry some of the things that they have and so that you feel there's a connection you're literally building a connection in the 3d world yeah yeah yeah so why do you have a fire well because wire was one of the most important music instruments in greek mythology and it was owned by the god of the sun, Apollo. And also it was a gift from Apollo to Orpheus to appreciate his music talent. Yeah. And so, for example, in my book, Oracle of the Mythic Heroes, when you look at the chapter under the heroes of cancer, there's one chapter about Orpheus. I would say probably he was my favorite characters. Yeah.

One of my favorite characters in Greek mythology. So I highly recommend that, you know, you read that chapter. And it's very, very interesting. And again, we can apply that in our daily life. Yeah. In a very interesting way. Yeah. Right.

And of course, everyone receives it probably exactly how they're supposed to, you know, however it fits into their own life and their own situations. I love that about these kind of stories because, you know, what someone might, you know, take from it, someone will take another part of it and go with it. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm from Louisiana and we have Mardi Gras and I don't live there now. I live in Colorado, but I did as a child. And they name all of the parades after.

There's an Orpheus parade. There's a Toth parade. There's, you know, there's all of the, like, the gods. Yeah. Yeah. The Greek mythology figures, right? Yeah. Yeah.

There's a Bacchus. Yeah. Those are all big parades. Yeah. Bacchus is Dionysus that you just talked about. It's the same guy. It's the same guy. Yeah, Bacchus is a Roman name. Dionysus is a Greek name, but it's the same god, the god of wine. There's a lot of Catholics over there. They probably knew that.

Yeah, so there's the two versions, right? So for example, Venus is Aphrodrodite right aphrodite is venus right and depending on in astrology we use the roman name more so we will call the planet venus but the greek counterpart is actually aphrodite yes yeah so bacchus and dionysus yeah both of them are the same god same god named by two different cultures yeah yeah there's a lot of power behind this stuff and i do believe it's because it holds such ancient wisdom yeah yeah naming children yeah things like that i think yeah it's quite common yeah even in uh let's say in uh in chinese culture we do that too and we because at the end yeah because at the end of the day we all hope our children to be divine. And that's just a wish from parents across the world. Nobody, if my child can be a god, why would I want my child to be a human?

You know, that kind of psychology, right? And even this is the same, you know, again, in the mythological story about Achilles. You know, people lived thousands of years ago did the same thing. How come Achilles has the so-called Achilles heel, right? So his mother Thetis was holding his heel and dipped him in the river Styx. And the problem is, and the reason was because his mother

wanted him to be divine. His mother said, I'm not going to let my son just to be immortal. He needs to be divine. That's why I'm going to dip him in the river so that he will be invincible. Well, but the problem was his heel was not invincible. so i think it's just a universal theme that we want our children to be divine we want our children to be better than other children whether we admit

that or not right yeah so when we name our children we tend to i think um put all these kind of beautiful things into it right well i Well, I mean, you should be doing with intentions, I think. Yeah, yeah. You know, I want to ask you, do you know how they say there's a little truth in every myth? You know, you've heard this before. Do you believe that, you know, besides, you know, naming the stars, you know, because they probably didn't have much to do but look at the stars back then. But do you think that there's a little bit of history that might be true?

Sometimes they talk about real places, real rivers. When I compare Sumerian, Mesopotamian text to biblical text, I'm like, man, they're talking about the same, similar stories, similar rivers, the Euphrates River, real places. I wonder how much truth might be involved in some of the stories. To be honest, nobody knows, right? But personally, I believe that there's always some truth in it. And the reason that all these stories can be passed you know generation after generation is because there's some truth in it and yeah of course if we say okay so where is the evidence of i mean we can always find small evidences here and there but nothing can really prove that that you know myth are real stories i think probably myth or real stories but exaggerated. Like the fish stories, you know,

they get bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah. When I was in the traveling Greece, I talked to a local, just a local Greek guy. He was my, he was a bus, a bus driver.

And he said, you know, because I thought on that day, I wanted to, to see an ancient ruin. And we talked about Hercules. And I said, I said,

do you, do Greek people actually think Hercules existed, you know, back then, let's say thousands of years ago. And I said, I said, do you, do Greek people actually think Hercules existed, you know, back then, let's say thousands of years ago? And he said, he said, well, I think there's, there must have been a guy who was very Herculean, you know, very strong, and maybe he did a lot of adventures, but his life was also difficult. You know, he was, there were a lot of challenges were imposed onto him but not as magical as how the story was told right so it's interesting even greek people they do believe that those figures existed but just not as fabulous as what we read in the stories yeah sounds like

religion you know could be. You know what? And actually, these were religions, you know, to these people. Oh, 100%. Well, they're pagan, right? Pagan used to be a religion. I mean, it's very interesting because when I was in Rome, I visited the Pantheon, right? And the whole history about Pantheon was it used to be a pagan temple.

So nowadays you go in, it's all jesus right um that kind of things is very religious now very catholic now but year many many years ago originally the pantheon was actually built for paganism because the whole concept of pantheon pan means all thean in greek language means god so pantheon means all gods. So there's not only one god. It's all the gods there, right? So we're talking about Apollo, Zeus, Hera, Hermes, all those Greek gods, right? So I visited the Pantheon, and I was actually, the only thing you can see the ancient Greek mythology feeling there is the outward structure, right? The pillars and everything.

But when you go inside now it's all catholic yes in turkey what's it called like the there's the library of celsius they have a sofia um that still stands in front but like all of these goddesses that were on the front there was also a virtue right there was like a wisdom and then i can't remember what the other one is but you know same thing very similar they stand these are archetypes that stand for good deeds or you know what you want to embody as a person yeah i just it to be so amazing like even I think they actually, I think the other one was justice. Yeah.

So tell me how you did your cards. Cause you know, I was, of course I'm a tourist. So I was interested in, in looking at those cards and how did you fit them in? And was it, is it according to where they are in the sky? So, yeah. So the 36 stories that were assigned to one of the the astrological decan and so there are 12 zodiac signs in the sky and each sign um includes three decans there so one star each story will be with one decan and that will um that symbolizes one of the qualities of that sign yeah okay wow that's so amazing i mean i'm just going to

learn so much i you know and i showed my kids this is like the first deck my kids were all like wow that is so cool i mean usually they're like oh god another deck mom's right but they were into it and especially my boys or even my daughter i mean's younger kids though so amazing you know what's interesting i was actually in uh uh talking to another um uh podcast i think you know his name his name is paul check he had this amazing podcast and he told me he said you know actually i'm asking my wife to read the stories to my children every night he said this could be actually a very yeah he said this could be a very good book even for teenagers to to because you know um it's not like too philosophical right it's very easily understandable and he said you know this this is great you know for my

children and i said wow i i didn't design this for children but you know if children and youngsters can can enjoy this book, why not? I think this could be very helpful. I absolutely, I totally agree. I feel like the book itself, I would have just bought. The cards is like double, triple bonus. And it's so amazing. I was so excited.

I am so excited. You know, this is interesting, right? Because most Oracle decks, right, the books are very thin. And the authors usually don't write a lot. Because usually for Oracle decks, they put a lot of attention onto the art, which is, of course, important. important but when i um was um creating this stack with my publisher beyond words um we made it very clear that i want to write an amazing book for this stack so this is not just about you know two two three sentences about a card and then okay that's it and just look at the art and and interpret it by your by yourself but it's more, I want people to really learn the mythological stories and read the case studies in the book as well

so that they can really apply this to their life. It's so good. I mean, if you want to learn more about the different gods and goddesses, and little did I know the also dark side of them. Oh, everybody, everybody. I just heard recently a different story about Medusa. What did you hear? Well, it was sad too. Like she was raped or something. And yeah. And I was like, oh, I never heard that. Of course. I just remember watching the movie when I was younger, which movie it oh my god it was so scary no she like slithered out and

she turned everyone into stone yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I forget what movie that was it was when I was like like in elementary school or something it was terrifying yeah there were a lot of stories about Medusa yeah um she's uh um a very complicated figure because you can't really call her a monster. She's not really a monster because originally she was a priestess serving at Athena's temple. You know, she was pure. She was lovely. And she was a victim. She was a victim of sexual assault, right? And the god of the ocean, Poseidon, her in um some people say he raped her some people say he seduced her and she gave up so she just did it with uh Poseidon uh and at the end it was very interesting you can see in ancient days it was women who was punished so even though she was a

victim when Athena found that found out that um she's no longer a virgin. She didn't have an argument with Poseidon. She said, it's your fault. You couldn't resist the Poseidon. You couldn't resist the seduction of Poseidon. So it's your fault. So I'm going to turn you into this ugly monster with snake hair. In a way, she was a victim. I think in mythology, when we look at Medusa, right, we also look at a lot of, even in modern day, I actually have seen a lot of women who experienced sexual assault, they will have a Medusa tattoo on their body, because they feel they can really resonate with this character. And Medusa was really, yeah, and you can see Medusa, you can't look at her in her eyes because she will turn things into stone.

Right. And in psychology, this is about our inner fear to deal with our history and to deal with our inner feelings. Even when you look at the English word, right, to be petrified, to be petrified originally actually means to be turned into stone. But now we actually see this word as to be terrified. Right. I'm scared. You say I'm petrified by something. So they're related. Being turned into stone means you are fear. You have fear, right? And so usually when we pull out this card, usually it needs us to really use a mirror to look at ourselves.

And that's why the keyword for the card is reflection. When Medusa looks at herself, she will turn herself into stone. And that's how she destroys fear inside her. But the problem is sometimes we're so afraid to look into the mirror. We are so afraid to look at how we truly feel, right? So this is a very, very deep card, actually. A lot of astrologers and historians have written a lot about Medusa. And of course, everyone has their own interpretation.

Some people might have more compassion for her because she was a victim. Some historians might see her in a different way and simply see her as the negative, the dark side, right, of our human psychology, et cetera, et cetera, yeah. For me, when I was writing this chapter, I wanted Medusa to be an encouraging message for our audience. et cetera, et cetera. For me, when I was writing this chapter,

I wanted Medusa to be an encouraging message for our audience. And I think that we all have that dark side in us, but we can always use that shiny mirror to reflect and to bring out the pure, who Medusa originally was, the pure 15, 16-year-old girl who had a lot of faith in Athena, who served Athena as a priestess, right?

Athena kind of seems like a bitch now to me. Again, you have to really read the entire history and the culture of ancient Greek and Greek mythology. You understand why. Because it was a very patriarchal society. If you read the stories, you will find that actually most heroes from Greek mythology are men.

There are very, very few female heroes per se. There was one whose name was Atalanta. And that's just how the society worked at that time. But Athena actually, she was also, to be honest, if you read a story just about Athena, she was a very androgynous goddess. She's not really a feminine. First of all, she was born not from a sexual union between her parents. She was born out of Zeus' head.

Zeus had had it one day and he fast as opened Zeus' head and here she is. She jumped out. I think my dad thought that of me. She never had a baby face, to be honest. She jumped out already in shiny armor as a grown woman. You know, that's who she is. And so Athena was not really representing the feeling, the compassionate, the empathetic, the feminine,

the warm, the compassionate, the empathetic, the feminine, the warm, the nurturing side of us. Athena is always about the rationality, brain energy, the brainy energy. That's why she's a goddess of justice. When you look at the justice, you can't use compassion. Sometimes people commit a crime because they also were abused, but you can't say, okay, so you are free now because you were a victim as well. You still have to go to jail because you killed someone, right? And that's how justice system works. Justice is not about emotion and feelings. Justice is about fact. You did this and this is a result. And so that's pretty much what Athena is. And that's why a lot of the stories when Athena was

dealing with mortal heroes, she tends to favor the male figures a lot because somehow in mythology um they connect the male figures with the divine masculine principles which is about rationality and it's about um perseverance right and she relates much less with the feminine energy yeah she's a very interesting goddess yeah but actually a lot of people love Athena because she tends to favor a lot of the yeah the male soldiers and uh heroes Hercules yeah you know Thetia yeah they all received help from Athena well and she's she was also the punisher to Medusa yeah one that gave that justice yeah the card that you actually showed earlier right the card justice and it was her with um Orestes. Oh, that was her. Yeah, yeah. So Athena was pretty much like intervening the situation and saying, okay, now we need to bring justice to the situation.

Okay, you know, who is pardoned, who is not, you know. So that chapter was also a very, that's a long story, actually. Yeah. You know what? I watched the other day, my oldest son, he suggested that I watch Alexander the Great. It was on Netflix. Did you see it by chance? Yeah. made him this god and even some of the you know stories that were told you wonder you know which were real and which weren't and achilles you know so was he a real person so you wonder you know if some of these stories were just real people and like alexander the great

yeah yeah yeah you know what i really enjoy talking to you i really enjoy talking about this maybe we could redo this in like a year when i've learned about all of these gods and goddesses and we could totally geek out about it. Absolutely. Yeah. I would love to, because I mean, like I said, I'm just dipping my toe into this. And I have another, you know, person that two other people, I think, that just contacted me. So I'm like, OK, I guess I'm supposed to learn about mythology. I know for myself, learning about the Gnostic Gospels and all of the ancient text to really look at these stories as allegorical stories. And like, what can they teach me? Like, why is this story still alive today?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on tell everybody where they could find this and do you do readings and stuff too because i know you're a scholar yeah yeah so for a personal consultation to book a spiritual counseling session they can find my information through my website www.thehealingkingdom.com and to purchase this Oracle deck, Oracle of the Mythic Heroes,

they can find it on Amazon, amazon.com or on the publisher's website. Simply just Google the name, yeah, Oracle of the Mythic Heroes on Google, you will find it. Yeah, online stores. Look forward to everyone in joining the stories.

I think it's awesome. I think that you can learn a whole lot, not just about these guys in here that are in girls. Yeah, but about yourself. Yeah. So thanks so much for doing that. It's very unique. And, and I love it. I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And I actually have another Oracle that coming out in June. It's called Oracle of the Celestial Deities, right? So this one that you're having now, it's focused on the mortal stories, right?

The heroes and heroines. The second deck coming is going to be focused on the golden goddesses. When that deck is coming out, maybe we can reconnect again. You can also already find this deck actually on Amazon. It's pre-ordered at this moment. Yeah. You can have a look. I'm really proud of the artwork for that bag. It's done by amazing artists. Yeah. It's just beautiful. Yeah. So yeah. Anytime. Yeah. I would love to reconnect. Yeah. Thank you so much for, for, you know, for showing your interest in my deck and in, in, in mythology. And I'm sure that we will have a lot more discussion about them.

Yes, perfect. I will see you in the summer then. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a wonderful day or night for you. Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com, where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.