Sage in the Sky

Does your mind feel like it’s running at 100 miles an hour, juggling thoughts, to-do lists, and worries? You’re not alone! In this episode of Sage in the Sky, we’re diving into self-care rituals designed specifically for busy minds. These simple, practical practices can help you calm the chaos, reconnect with yourself, and find moments of peace—even on the busiest days. In This Episode, You’ll Discover: Why self-care is essential for calming a busy mind. 5 simple self-care rituals you can start today, including: Tips to make these rituals stick, even with a packed schedule. Whether you’re a seasoned self-care pro or just starting out, this episode will give you tools to create pockets of calm in your day and help you reconnect with what matters most. Hit play now to start calming the chaos and finding more clarity in your life. Free New Moon Ritual Blog Post: Create Your Own New Moon Ritual Which ritual will you try first? I’d love to hear how it works for you! Share your thoughts and tag me on Instagram @Sage_inthe_Sky Next week, we’re diving into intuition—how to hear it, trust it, and let it guide you. If you’ve ever second-guessed your gut feelings, you won’t want to miss this one!

Welcome to this tender, truth-telling episode of Sage in the Sky: The Podcast, where we discuss one of the deepest roots of spiritual and creative self-silencing: the Witch Wound.In this soul-nourishing conversation, Carrie explores the ancestral fear of being seen, judged, or silenced, and how this inherited trauma still shows up today, especially for those reclaiming their voice, magic, or spiritual path.We’ll journey through:~ What the Witch Wound really is (and how to know if you carry it)~ A powerful look at the Scottish witch trials and their lingering legacy~ The modern-day signs of the Witch Wound, from self-doubt to people-pleasing~ How Tarot becomes a sacred ally in reclaiming your power and voice~ Deep reflections on the High Priestess, The Tower, and Nine of Wands~ Practical ways to begin healing, honour your ancestors, and come home to yourselfCarrie also shares a heartfelt personal story about struggling to share her Tarot practice publicly , and the tender journey of putting her work into the world through Sage in the Sky.This is a space for remembering, reclaiming, and rising. If you’ve ever felt like you had to dim your light to stay safe, this one’s for you.Mentioned in this episode:~ The Witch Wound and ancestral trauma~ Tarot as a healing modality~ Practical rituals for visibility and voice~ A loving call to take up space, even when it’s scaryLet’s Connect:Instagram: @sage_inthe_skyWebsite: sageinthesky.comIf this episode resonates with you, I’d be so grateful if you’d share it, leave a review, or send a wee message. Your voice matters, and you’re never walking alone. Thank you.You are sacred. You are seen. You are the living flame of those who came before you.

Back at Lùnastal we spent an hour asking who lit the fire on your hill. This is the other side of it. Who are you lighting them for.And I want to be careful, because the obvious version of this episode is one you don't need. You have been pouring yourself out for other people since you were about nineteen and it's a large part of why you're tired.So here's what I actually think. Most of what we call helping is doing things for people that they could do themselves. It doesn't light any fires. It makes them smaller and it makes you emptier, and those turn out to be the same process.There's a piece of family systems work behind that, from a psychiatrist called Murray Bowen, and it's the sharpest thing I've brought you in this series. He described over-functioning and under-functioning as reciprocal positions. They produce each other. One person's taking over is what creates the room for the other's stepping back, and the stepping back pulls more taking over. So the woman doing eighty percent of everything is not surrounded by useless people. The people around her have become less capable because she does it all. Same fact, seen from two ends.He was clear that this isn't a character flaw. It's a way of managing anxiety and it works, which is why it's so hard to shift. The line worth having is that both positions bring the anxiety down, and what neither of them does is help anybody grow.Then the alternative, which our people had. The taigh-cèilidh, the visiting house. Every township had one, and it wasn't appointed, it emerged, usually because the fire was good or the woman of the house was welcoming. People drifted there after the work was done. The news first, then the songs and the long tales that could run three nights. And over in the corner, out of the way, the children, half asleep, absorbing an entire culture.The folklorists call these houses informal schools. And nobody in that room was teaching anybody. The adults were doing the thing, well, in front of people who knew when you got it wrong. That's the whole method, and it carried the language, the stories and the music of Gaelic Scotland across centuries with almost nothing written down.And the Queen of Wands, who is the warmest woman in the deck and is sitting down. She isn't out looking for anyone. She's seated, holding her own sprouting wand, with a black cat at her feet that cannot be commanded by anybody. And her body faces you while her head is turned away, which is a very particular kind of welcome.There's a practice at the end about handing one thing back, and it's the hardest one I've given you.Next week is the last of the twelve, on the equinox.A note: none of this applies to somebody who genuinely can't do the thing. Small children, people who are ill, anyone in a crisis. Doing the work for a person who isn't able is care, and it isn't what this episode is about. The episode says so.Take the quizYou already know. So what are you waiting for? Nine questions, about three minutes, and at the end you get the name of the pattern that's been keeping you where you are. Each result is a figure out of Scottish folklore. At sageinthesky.com. Answer as you are, not as you intend to be.

There's a feeling I hear about constantly from women in their forties and fifties, and it never comes out directly. It sounds like: I've left it too late. That was the window, and I was busy. The interesting part has already happened and I wasn't paying enough attention while it did.Underneath all of those is a picture, and I want to get it out into the light. The picture is a hill. You climb, you reach the top, and then you go down the other side. Which puts a woman of forty-eight somewhere on the descent, not because of anything she's done, but because of the shape of the diagram.I've called this series Light Over the Hill, so I've been handing you that shape for nine weeks. This week I'd like to complicate it, and offer two others.The first is the Cailleach. The old woman who made Scotland, striding across the country with a creel of stones on her back, dropping the mountains behind her as she went. Blue-skinned, one-eyed, rust-red teeth, and nobody has ever tried to make her lovely. She rules the dark half of the year from Samhain to Beltane, washes her great plaid in the Corryvreckan whirlpool until it comes out white and lays it over the country as the first snow, herds and protects the red deer, and vanishes at Beltane. Her power and her age are the same fact. And there's a stone house in Glen Lyon where somebody still takes her family out at Beltane and puts them back at Samhain, every year, as far back as anyone can trace.I've also included the part that stops this being a pep talk, which is that she grieves. There's a poem twelve hundred years old in which the oldest woman in our folklore sits down and mourns her own youth in some detail. Both things are true at once.Then the research that has been arguing with the hill for twenty years, and I've given you the contested version rather than the headline, because the shape has been changing and it deserves honesty. What has survived every revision is that none of it is a hill.And the Wheel of Fortune, which floats in the sky with no ground beneath it, because on a wheel there is no summit. The top is a position you pass through.Next week we come near the end, and it's the other side of the Lùnastal episode. We asked then who lit the fire on your hill. Next week, who you're lighting them for.This week's card: the Wheel of Fortune. It floats with no ground under it, and the top is somewhere you pass through.Take the quizYou already know. So what are you waiting for? Nine questions, about three minutes, and at the end you get the name of the pattern that's been keeping you where you are. Each result is a figure out of Scottish folklore. At sageinthesky.com. Answer as you are, not as you intend to be.

This is the warm one. We've had eight weeks of heavy weather, and the year has turned toward the harvest, so I've the Sun for you.Which is exactly where somebody in my line of work is most likely to say something useless. So here's the thing I want to be straight about. You cannot make a sun. And a fair bit of your life has gone by while you waited for one to come up, because there's a way of thinking that goes: I'll start when work settles, when I've got my energy back, when I feel more like myself. Every one of those is waiting on something arriving from outside you that changes the conditions, and you have no hand in any of it.So this episode is about the other thing. At the end of August, the women and the bairns went out to the wet ground to cut rushes. You strip the green skin off to get at the pith inside, leaving one narrow rib of green running the length of it, because without that the pith has no backbone and collapses in your hand. Then you dip it in whatever fat the household has saved in a pan by the fire. And you have light, made out of a weed from the worst bit of the field and the grease off the dinner.These things existed because a tax in 1709 priced poor people out of candles. So this is not a charming rustic craft. And they were held in an iron clip at about forty-five degrees, because too upright burns dim and too flat burns out fast. Our people built the discipline into the object rather than relying on anybody's willpower.There's also where the phrase comes from. You could light a rushlight at both ends for twice the light and half the time, and it originally meant reckless and wasteful. I don't think I need to labour that one.Then a diary study of twelve thousand entries that found the single strongest driver of a good day was making some progress on something that mattered, and that small progress worked nearly as well as breakthroughs. Along with the half of that finding nobody quotes, which is that setbacks hit two to three times harder than progress helps.And the Sun card, which has a wall in it that most people walk straight past.Next week is the one I've been looking forward to since I planned this series, and it's about the old woman who made the mountains.This week's card: the Sun. The sun makes no effort at all, and that isn't available to us. The wall is the interesting part.Take the quizYou already know. So what are you waiting for? Nine questions, about three minutes, and at the end you get the name of the pattern that's been keeping you where you are. Each result is a figure out of Scottish folklore. At sageinthesky.com. Answer as you are, not as you intend to be.