“I’m stepping off the hamster wheel, because I know it will be right there waiting for me if I ever decide to come back.

All you have to do is listen.”

- Payne Lindsey, High Strange Podcast

Today didn’t go as I had planned. 

Most of my days, recently, haven’t. 

I didn’t expect to get enthralled into a deep dive podcast about aliens — a subject I’ve given almost no consideration to in my 35 years of living — until like two weeks ago.

“Not everyone is on fire about wanting to know about UFOs,” journalist Leslie Kean, an important contributor to the new High Strange podcast, reports. “It’s something that most people don’t have the time and energy to think about… this is a paradigm shifting thing.”

A few years ago, when I “stepped off the hamster wheel” (love that quote) and into the work of full time witchcraft, in a way, I essentially agreed to spend my time exploring these ever shifting paradigms on behalf of both myself and my current and future clients.

Together, we made it my job to share my findings with you in our 1:1 sessions, in my programs like The Empress Sessions, and in the content I create.

These Things Just Happen Sometimes 

This morning, Carmelita was messing with the stack of tarot cards I keep on the etagere next to my bed and knocked them over, as she has recently taken interest in doing. I collected and re-stacked them, face down, and went on about my morning. Then a bit later, I looked over at the etagere (which is, like, the messiest altar ever) and saw the 8 of Wands staring back up at me, there, at the top of the stack.

Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it. I would assume that I was mistaken. That I simply placed the cards face up instead of face down.

But these times are nothing but “normal”.

And the 8 of Wands indicates as much.

The benefit of having a seasoned tarot reader like me read your cards over let’s say… your friend who bought a deck a month (or a year) ago… is simply my immense amount of experience. 

Tarot reading is comprised of way more than the breadth of this essay but part of it is pattern recognition. A reader like me who has given literally thousands of readings to an untold amount of humans for almost a quarter of a century… babe, I’ve seen some shit.

Back in November, in an effort to promote one of my under-utilized services, a body based healing modality called EFT tapping paired with a channeled reading, I introduced a mini Instagram series called Tarot & Tapping Tuesdays. (See my Instagram highlights.) 

The premise was I would talk about the tarot card I was seeing the most frequently that week in my client work and channel a reading on it, each week, for a month. 

When you do this work in volume (which is one of the only ways to “make it” aka survive as a full time reader) you start to recognize reoccurring themes in the client work that more or less define a moment in time. Because I’m also an astrologer (though not a professionally practicing one) I’m aware this is likely indicative of the active planetary transits, and it often strikes me as yet another of the infinitely interesting ways reality reflects back to me the web of interconnections we exist within… which is a nicer way of saying “when you stare into the void, the void starts to stare back.”

Speaking of transits, March contained some wild ones! Every March brings the sun’s ingress into Aries, which marks the start of the Astrological New Year, a transitional moment of change, but this one occurred in tandem with a juicy 0 degree New Moon in Aries — the first of two we get this Aries season, and the last new moon before eclipse season wreaks havoc.

This, alone, would be a big deal… but that’s not all. The two arguably heaviest planets in our solar system, also changed signs in the last few weeks. Saturn ingressed into Pisces after a six year long back to back stint in Capricorn and Aquarius, signs it rules, and Pluto is now in Aquarius for a brief but informative three month moment before it finishes off unfinished Capricorn biz (watch out banks) and turns its sights on the Aquarian tech sector.

Pluto is a planet (yes, bitch, A PLANET) that demands healing so much it will use excessive (possibly destructive) force to achieve it. And being as it only changes signs every 15-20 years, defining literal generations, doing so… well, it’s a big deal.

Thus the 8 of Wands has entered the chat.

This card is unique. It’s a merry prankster. In my humble opinion, it’s the only card illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith in the genre defining Rider Waite Smith tarot deck to have no life force representation on it, as I consider the ♥️ on the 3 of Swords to be human. 

This card gets a kick of being an anomaly. But right now, in the wake of Pluto’s emergence into the Aquarian mansion, it’s anything but.

In fact I see this card all the fuckin time as of late.

It’s in most of my personal card pulls, and damn near all my client sessions. I see other readers pulling it. It was so pervasive last week that I brought Tarot & Tapping back and EFT tapped on it not once but twice.

And it’s not going away.

I wish that the ubiquitousness of the card itself was the extent of the weirdness — but we both know it’s not.

The card itself, like all of tarot, really, is a reflection of the reality of the moment.

Shit is… Really Weird RN.

Last weekend, I got a message from a former tarot student. The tone wasn’t quite panicked — but she was definitely a bit unsettled.

(I have permission to share this story, btw.)

Long story short, she was going through some pretty intense (and very intentional) life changes that some might say (okay, I might say 🙋🏼‍♀️) is a timeline jump. 

But this was a real ordinary morning.

She opened her drawer in her Texas home to pull out her favorite pair of boxes, old and faded, and branded to her East Coast college, and she was pretty fucking shocked to find a much newer pair of the exact same boxers folded up underneath them. 

Previously to this moment, she was prettyyyyyy damn certain she had only owned that one raggedy old pair.

After briefly questioning her wife, who absolutely had nothing to do with it, she had to reconcile with the only obvious answer.

These things just… happen sometimes.

A Glitch in the Matrix

The second episode of another Payne Lindsey podcast, Radio Rental, might be my most played podcast of all time.

Radio Rental is a series of creepy short stories told by real people who experienced bizarre situations in their everyday lives.

The second story of this episode of the podcast is told by a skeptical young recent NYC transplant who is broken up with by a violently angry doppelgänger of his girlfriend in an unrecognizable outfit but who has a very real set of keys to their apartment.

When his normally tempered, familiarly dressed girlfriend returns from running errands immediately after the incident (literally as he is standing, teary eyed, watching a cab drive off with the angry doppelgänger) she is understandably shocked to find a bag of her things missing from the residence. And she’s pretty understandably in disbelief to hear the items were packed up and taken by an angry alternate timeline version of herself who also destroyed the place in a fit of rage.

She is similarly unsettled, along with her NYPD detective father, to watch an uncanny version of herself angrily marching through the hallway of her building on CCTV in the apartment complex office.

Post break up, the still bewildered guy eventually contacts a family friend, an NYU physics professor, who essentially says… these things just happen sometimes!!!!

Sometimes alternate realities briefly overlap and are witnessed or experienced, or leave evidence behind. The Mandela effect. The Berenstein Bears. Whatever.

A glitch in the matrix!!!!

In the curious case of my former student, my best guess is that she briefly glitched timelines with a version of herself that had two pairs of the college boxers.

When she came to my studio a few days later to open her Akashic records and get my professional witch and amateur quantum physicist assessment of the incident, I joked that at least the universe multiplied her beloved item rather than snatch it up.

(I have to imagine this was much like consulting the esteemed Ivy League physics professor in the podcast story, I bet he has hot pink neons in his office as well. Is NYU even an Ivy? Or does it just feel fAnCy?)

Anyway, just a few hours later, I would not be so lucky.

Every Airpod Everywhere All At Once

I have had one pair of AirPods for the last five years.

This has shocked multiple astrologers upon learning I have a natal Pisces moon.

It was basically a point of pride!

Anyway, after the session with my former student, I felt a familiar calling to treat myself to a late night movie before heading home.

I hadn’t yet seen Everything Everywhere All At Once — which shocks people, given how topical it is to my work. But I had my reasons why. I knew it was going to be an important film for me, and I needed to feel ready.

And the 9:25 pm showing on service industry Tuesday at Violet Crown Cinema was the opportunity that met the moment.

One of my other favorite podcasts, You Must Remember This, had just dropped the premiere episode of a new season (exciting week for me and podcasts) and I’d been listening intermittently throughout my busy day through the magic of said AirPods.

I was having to be really intentional about listening since I couldn’t take it all in at once, so I was being quite mindful of what Karina Longworth was saying in the moments where I locked up my studio and walked to my Lyft. Then I walked up to the Alfa Romeo that was assigned to pick me up, which is a Lyft you don’t see every day. 

But Lamont, my driver, didn’t see me approaching and assumed I was as across the street, and so he began to pull away right as I reached for the door handle. This caused me to call him, creating a timestamp of my beloved AirPods in what would be their final use.

Once in the car, I registered how attractive the driver of this objectively sexy car was, and graciously accepted his apology for driving off on me. He commented it was “a short, five minute drive”, and in that moment I realized I should remove my AirPods now so as not to fuss with them at my destination, and also, in case Lamont wanted to propose or something.

Okay, so I’m giving all these details to illustrate how clear and intentional I was being! Which, frankly, is not always the case with me and my AirPods case! (But also if any of y’all know Lamont, have him holler.)

I put the pods back into the case, put the case into my small Telfar, which was essentially cosplaying as a Russian nesting doll inside my larger Telfar bag. These little bitches were secure, okay?

When Lamont dropped me off in front of the theater downtown and encouraged me to enjoy the film, was it in my subconscious that it would be nice to be going to the movie with a dude like him rather than solo?

Possibly?!

Idk, I like going to late night movies alone, tbh. It’s kinda My Thing. 

Even if I was on a different timeline where I had a hot boyfriend with a bougie ass car, I’d probably still catch a solo 9:30 pm movie on a Tuesday sometimes, you know?

Who knows — but I absolutely did take Lamont’s advice to enjoy the movie. I suspected that it would bring up many emotions for me, and it absolutely did.

But all things must come to and end, and as I was waiting on my final Lyft of the night, I was really confused to reach into the smaller Telfar inside the larger Telfar and… not find my damn AirPods?

Listen — I knew what I did with them, and I was certain I had done it. But, life gives you lemons and all that… so my immediate assumption (isn’t it obvious?!!?) is that Lamont IS my one true love and, thusly, the universe CLEARLY magnetized my crusty 1st Gen AirPods into the leather seats of his luxury car in an effort to magically bond us.

This dream was dashed, though, when a few minutes later sweet sweet Lamont responded to my Lost Item request. 

With a heavy heart, he regretted to inform me that he did not recover my missing AirPods.

So, what the fuck? Also, I tried to make this objectively kinda fucking boring story about a dumb old glitch in the dumb old matrix as interesting as possible… but the truth is…

THESE THINGS JUST HAPPEN SOMETIMES!!!!!

Like, for instance, I just looked at my bank account. The last transactions were: $91.19, $73.37, $18.89… I just laughed and said out loud to source “I hate y’all.”

Angel numbers… or any randomly repeating digits… Show me the damn 8 of Wands without a damn tarot deck. 

Sometimes it’s a song you hear constantly at random… or a specific repetitive turn of phrase… One time, for me, it was an entire month of increasingly more bizarre references to the Wu Tang Clan… It was nonsensical!

Rationality is certainly not the point.

That’s what the 8 of Wands translates to — those bizarre little signals from source that only you would register.

They are subtle enough that you aren’t questioning your sanity but obvious enough that… it’s clear to you that something is happening.

It bears repeating, I guess: When you stare into the void long enough, the void stares back. 

Or maybe just winks.

The Biggest Story That No One Wants to Hear

“No one wants to be the UFO guy,” High Strange podcast quotes an esteemed Poltico journalist saying about a third of the way through the first episode.

“I, too, don’t want to be the UFO guy,” says Payne Lindsey, the podcast narrator.

Me either, Payne. 

And I guess I’m not?

I never watched the X Files as a kid. Like Idc if the truth is out there?! 🤷🏼‍♀️

But maybe… by virtue of the Akashic records… I’m an 👽 girlie? 

Like I said, when you first explore conversing with the “light beings” (that’s literally what they are called) who have been granted access to the mind-blowing vastness of the Akashic records on your behalf… your specific team of “Masters, Teachers, and Loved Ones” (MTLOs)… you’re told straight up that the vast majority of those who you are communicating with are not (and most have never been) human.

They are quite literally, by definition, extraterrestrial.

I’ve known this the whole year I’ve been doing this work, but it’s also easier not to “know”, you know?

It’s certainly easier for a lot of my clients to not think so hard about it so I typically go light on the details of the MTLOs altogether unless I’m directly asked.

I’ve said a lot about a lot today — so I’ll refrain, at least for the moment, to disclose my ever-evolving opinion about who the MTLOs might be — suffice it to say, it’s absolutely connected to my ideas about timelines and timeline jumping.

I am also answering hella questions over in my IG stories today about how this pertains to timeline jumping (duh) as it’s the last weekend to enroll in the Empress Sessions and step into the void on purpose as a means of living your best f*cking life.

Maybe 👽 are rad? But like, give me back my AirPods?