In the Northern Hemisphere, November can be a tough month. Things start to get colder and darker. Snow may or may not have arrived yet, but the trees are bare, seeming to shiver in the wind. The cheer and playfulness of Halloween is over, and we’re not yet into the holiday break, especially if you are in Canada, where Thanksgiving has already passed.

In ancient times, before our modern calendar, people tracked the time and seasons by the moon. November’s full moon has been called the Frost Moon by the Cree, the Freezing Moon by the Anishinaabe, the Dark Moon by the ancient Celts, and the Snow Moon by the Medieval English. November marks the true beginning of the cold season, and it can be a difficult one to get throu

In Greek mythology, Hera is the wife of Zeus, and while she is said to be very beautiful, presiding over marriage, birth, and many aspects of women’s lives, she is not the most popular of the Greek goddesses. She is often seen as jealous and spiteful, causing problems for Zeus’s many lovers and illegitimate children. But there is some evidence that Hera was around long before Zeus ever came into the picture.

Pre-Hellenic Greece had a thriving goddess culture, and Athena, Hera, Demeter, Persephone, Pandora, and several others were worshiped before any of the male gods showed up. As Charlene Spretnak explains in her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, beginning around 2500 BCE, waves of invasions by northern groups including the Dorians brought the concept of the male gods—and patriarchy itself—to these matriarchal societies.

The Knight of Cups tarot card usually shows a young man in shining white armor atop a white horse, holding up a cup. He is on a quest for love—the quest of the cups, the suit of emotion, connection, and love. He can also be a bit of a bad boyfriend.

The Knight of Cups is the archetype of the “knight in shining armor.” He is a fairytale figure, someone who will come and rescue us from whatever distress we happen to be in. His cup echoes the Holy Grail, the magical cup that can solve anyone’s problem but might not actually exist. He offers the promise of escape, of rescue, of the joy and pleasure of love and romance outside of the painful realities we may be dealing with at the time. In some cases, this can be a really wonderful thing. But there are also times when we need to watch out for the Knight of Cups because he is not everything he seems.

According to heaps of archaeological evidence, the Goddess was once worshiped all over the world by many different names. She was often depicted in three forms: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Sometimes these three goddesses were sisters, sometimes separate goddesses reflecting different archetypes, and sometimes as the same goddess in different life cycles.

The Maiden

The Maiden embodies the new moon, springtime, and the dawn, as well as moments of new potential and possibility. She is the Greek Persephone, originally referred to as Kore, which translates to “maiden.” She is also Brigid, the beautiful red-haired Irish goddess of early spring, representing the energy that pushes the very first shoots of grass and flowers up through the snow. She is birth and rebirth after death in the Goddess cycle.

We all know that having a connection to our intuition is a good thing. It can help us differentiate a good friend from someone who is trying to take advantage of us. It can help us move toward what we want even when other people might disagree with our choices. It can help us know whether we should go up or down, right or left. Or can it?

Intuition is, essentially, our sixth sense. It’s a feeling of knowing beneath our cognitive understanding. It’s knowing without being able to explain how we know. But what if our intuition is broken? What if what we’ve been feeling all along is actually something else, like fear?

In the classical protocols for addiction, abstinence is king. Twelve-step programs and other strategies help people quit a certain substance or behavior and stay off it forever. While this strategy absolutely works for some people, it doesn’t work for everyone. According to the American Addiction Centers, only about five to 12 percent of people who go through a 12-step program actually succeed in recovering from their addiction. So what if there’s another way to work with addiction? What if abstinence isn’t the only option?

We might take our thumbs for granted most of the time, but when thumb pain shows up, we remember how much we need them. They are involved in many of the everyday tasks that we do, and it is our opposable thumbs that separate us from many other animals, making us able to grasp and use a wide variety of tools. If your thumb pain is severe and ongoing, you may need to speak to a health practitioner to see what kind of treatment would help your thumb best. In the meantime, let’s explore the spiritual meaning of thumb pain.

Plant medicines have been used for generations in many cultures to heal mental and physical health issues. When talk therapy was not an option (and before it existed), spirituality often met that need, helping people put their problems into a larger context to find hope and faith. Plant medicines have often assisted with that journey.

Healing from a surgery or illness is not a linear journey — some days may feel harder than others. Fortunately, tools like meditation can support your healing and ease the difficult emotions that accompany the process. 

In this blog post, you’ll discover a self-healing meditation designed to nurture your body and calm your mind. Join Julie Peters, one of Insight Timer’s beloved teachers, as she guides you in restoring balance and harmony within yourself. Follow along to reconnect with your body, release discomfort, and promote healing.

Baba Yaga is the classic crone, the Witch of the Forest. She is old and ugly, often riding around in a mortar without a pestle or on a broom. She lives in a little magical hut that has sentient chicken legs to carry her wherever she wants to go, making her exceedingly hard to find. In some of her stories, she cooks and eats children in her giant stove. In others, she gives them magic, helping them survive and thrive if they are willing to work on her terms.

The Ten of Pentacles is a tarot card that generally represents legacy and the experience of coming to the end of a satisfying journey. And yet there’s something a little off about this card too. It has chaos and dissatisfaction sitting in its shadow. The classical Rider-Waite-Smith version of this card generally shows an older man with his back to the viewer. He is looking toward a couple and their child, and he has two dogs at his feet. The scene is overlain with an image of the Tree of Life made of pentacles. So, what is the spiritual meaning of the Ten of Pentacles?

Shame has got to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences of human life. When I’m working with my clients on shame and I ask them what shame feels like, they might tell me it’s a sickness in their stomach or a thick, sludge-like energy that makes them want to crawl out of their skin. Shame has the power to make you want to do almost anything to get away from that feeling.

And yet, every feeling that we are capable of feeling has a purpose and a reason. Sometimes that reason goes back to our very survival. So, what could be the upside of shame?

Snoring is common enough: Most of us snore a little bit at night, and it can come and go, especially when we’re experiencing allergies or nasal congestion. In some cases, snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea, which should be ruled out by a healthcare practitioner. Clearing the sinuses, elevating your head at night, avoiding sleeping on your back, and doing oral myofascial physiotherapy are all ways to address and hopefully improve snoring.

But what might snoring be telling us about our emotional and spiritual states? If the body is trying to tell us something, what is it saying? Let’s explore the spiritual meaning of snoring.

Seasonal allergies, known also as hay fever, are common enough and usually relatively benign. They can include sneezing, runny nose, hives, and other cold-like symptoms recurring around the same time each year. There are over-the-counter medications that can help short-term, and if your allergies are more serious you may want to talk to a doctor about treatments that can help. In the meantime, it could support your system to consider the spiritual meaning of allergies and hay fever and see if we can approach the problem more holistically.

Anxiety is one of the most common experiences we have as human beings. It can be a natural reaction to occasional stressful events, but for some of us it is a constant state. Many think of it as a version of fear, and fear may certainly be present with anxiety, but anxiety is more complicated than that. Anxiety has a few functions that can be helpful to understand. When we understand that anxiety can be a teacher, we may be able to soften it a little bit and find out what it’s trying to teach us.

While Mary has not been traditionally regarded as a goddess, her story reflects more ancient goddess archetypes and can teach us valuable lessons about the power of compassion and motherhood.

The Virgin Mary is not, doctrinally, a goddess. She is the mother of Jesus Christ, and in many Christian traditions, it would be heretical to worship her above God himself.

And yet the Virgin Mary is beloved by Christians and non-Christians the world over. To this day, she is represented in art, figurines, and even tattoos by people who adore her. In their book Evolution of the Goddess, Anne Baring and Jules Cashford discuss the plethora of art centered on Mary and point out that “in art, for the most part, Jesus is either a newly born infant or dead!”

All of our ancient ancestors ate intuitively with the seasons. Learn how to tap into these methods for greater health and well-being

Intuitive eating is a simple enough practice: It essentially means eating in accordance with the signals of the body. Eat what you crave when you are hungry, just to the point of fullness.

Because of the culture many of us live in, for some, this simple practice has become so challenging that they seek out dietitians who specialize in intuitive eating. This approach to eating would have been the way we consumed food before there were diets or ever-changing social media-fueled beauty standards; we would have eaten for pleasure and survival, and that’s about it.

The Ten of Swords can be a scary card to pull in a reading. But there’s more to this card than meets the eye. What is the spiritual meaning of the Ten of Swords tarot card?

The Ten of Swords tarot card is one of the most disturbing images in the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck. It depicts someone lying on the ground, probably dead, pierced with ten giant swords. There is a storm brewing in the dark sky, but there is a light rising in the distance. In the Modern Witch tarot deck by Lisa Sterle, the woman in the image is lying on the ground, pierced with the ten swords, but she is so busy looking at her phone she doesn’t notice.

This can be an intense and somewhat scary card to pull in a reading. But there’s more to this card than meets the eye. Let’s talk about the spiritual meaning of the Ten of Swords tarot card.

The Egyptian goddess Nut can teach us lessons about the power of motherhood and the eternally nurturing nature of the night. Learn more.

In ancient Egypt, the night sky, filled with stars and streaked with the Milky Way, was embodied by a goddess named Nut (pronounced “newt”). Nut is unusual in the sense that most ancient cultures understood the sky as masculine and the earth as feminine, but in ancient Egypt, the sky goddess wrapped herself lovingly around her beloved earth god, Geb. These two were so in love, so constantly connected, that the sun god Ra had to get between them, thus creating the day.

While the female body has a deep connection with the cycles of the moon, anyone can work with the cycles of the moon for healing. Learn how.

Hormones affect everything from menstruation to digestion, immunity to skin health, and even weight loss or gain. Stress can have a major impact on our hormones, and we live in a culture that is highly stressful and doesn’t offer a lot of time for rest and recovery.

Some stress is normal and healthy, of course. But when stress is constant or we experience ongoing stress related to a past experience, that stress can become toxic. We can address stress with counseling, lifestyle changes, and other support (like a 40-day nervous system protocol). It’s also possible to support hormone health by working with the moon cycle.