52. Ken/ Keeping Still, Mountain

Sagittarius Full Moon Deep Dive

The last several weeks have presented me with a truly novel shamanic challenge: working to maintain balance while navigating seemingly impossible-to-navigate points of energetic tension.

Said another way? I found myself being challenged, on an almost minute-by-minute basis, to physically embody opposing elemental forces, leaving me feeling like I had been energetically and physically de-gloved and disintegrated in the fashion of a threadbare sock getting dismantled, once and for all, in the dryer.

This, in turn, resulted in me desperately seeking a solution to the age-old paradox: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

The answer to this question is the central theme of this coming Sagittarius Full Moon on June 11th.

And how, you might be wondering, did I come to receive this answer?

Well, while in the throws of working to regain any semblance of balance between what anthropologists refer to as sacred space (psychic, Woo work) and profane space (the day-to-day grind of our material reality), I posed the question to my primary spirit guide du jour, Prometheus, asking, “What in the actual fuck is going on?”

The result to my query came in the form of I Ching hexagram 52. Ken/ Keeping Still, Mountain. The moment I saw it, I knew that this was a direct and profound explanation of what I (and many of my clients and collaborators) have been experiencing.

It also brought a slight smile to my face when I remembered that Prometheus is quite famous for having been forced to, um, “keep still” while tied to the side of the Caucasus Mountains— and being made to endure having his liver eaten daily by Zeus’ dastardly eagle.

Now that’s what I call spiritual discomfort.

Of course, in the days to follow after this I Ching pull, I was granted access to yet more insights, experiences, and layers of meaning to this response from Prometheus— including a trip to a John Wick-style illicit seed merchant on the astral plane, the discovery of prophetic messages written on sidewalks, the sensation of holding strange electricity within my body, and even enduring a Biblical-grade hail storm that decimated my TOTEM Flower Essence Garden…leaving an alien landscape in its wake.

The upshot? It feels like a very, very important time with very, very important messages from the Woo.

And lots and lots of churn in the meantime.

This Sagittarius Full Moon feels different, and the insights that were so *generously* bestowed upon me seem to have larger implications— including for all of you lovely Substack readers that might be feeling a similar tension between this swell of psychic, expansive energy and the limitations of an increasingly fucked up, unpredictable and constricting physical reality.

I mean, have you tried calling customer service lately to deal with getting locked out of your UPS account for your small business? Maybe while you’re also experiencing the waking psychedelia of communing with the Woo?

Yah. You’ll come away from the experience wondering if, in the style of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, you’ve died and gone to hell without realizing it.

But it’s not hell. It’s just a spiritual concept the Russians call “toska”.

And that’s exactly where we begin this Full Moon Deep Dive.

Toska

You gotta give it to the Russians. They really do have a way with words.

Case in point: the Russian word "toska”.

While it doesn't have an exact equivalent word or concept in the English language, toska generally refers to a feeling of intense sadness, melancholy, agitation, suffering or spiritual anguish, often without a known or specific cause.

It has been described as a deep yearning, a sense of emptiness, or a feeling of being weighed down. The overall gist? Toska is the discomfort that results from spiritual expansion and evolution while still living within the limited, material world and its constraints— like our mortal “earth suits” of flesh and blood, our bank accounts, or the meager 24 hours we get in a day to actually get stuff done.

Toska is a kind of active restlessness that tells us something is coming, becoming or manifesting— and that we need to ready ourselves for a major shift.

As a shaman— a type of practitioner that tends to experience energetic stuff in a physical way— I have experienced a few acute cycles of toska. One of those times were the days leading up to direct psychic contact with a YHVH-level, god-tier God (think of it as God with a capital “G”), which I wrote about in detail HERE on Substack.

Prior to direct psychic contact with what I understood to be YHVH all those years ago, I became energetically and physically agitated for “no reason”, experiencing a low thrum of electricity through my limbs and generally just feeling like I had a medical-grade case of “Ants in the Pants”. I was feeling a significant rub with material reality, almost like an invisible sandpaper was being applied to my energy body (and insides, to be frank). At the same time, my objective awareness was expanding exponentially, and I quickly realized in perfect high definition clarity that a romantic relationship I was in had to end immediately, that I had to bring TOTEM out of its temporary retirement, and then I started to really take in all of the pain and chaos of the world around me— without a filter or chaser.

Pro tip: when experiencing acute toska, resist the urge to break up with the person you’re going to then immediately ride in a limo with to the airport. And then sit next to on a flight from Florida to Chicago.

It was…awkward.

Anyways, after I had my little chat with Sky Daddy, I realized that the toska I experienced in the days leading up to our celestial Zoom meeting was really just a manifestation of my vibration going way, way up and my physical container working to expand (somewhat painfully) to accommodate this new software plug-in— and its downstream evolutions and integrations. It felt a bit like what I would imagine a butterfly experiences while struggling to emerge from its chrysalis: confused, uncomfortable, and a bit panicked, but ultimately moving (and evolving) in the right direction.

In the last three weeks, I’ve had a much more acute case of toska than when I last talked to Sky Daddy— and I’m not the only one. Many of my clients have been reaching out in similar states of spiritual distress, scheduling energy work or trying to troubleshoot what might be going on in the safety of our Spiritual Transformation Coaching Program.

My toska symptoms generally include a pronounced sensation of an electrical current running through my body, a version of what feels like shin splints throughout my limbs and chest, almost unmanageable levels of overt synchronicities in mundane reality, near-constant astral travel in sleep, noticeable weight loss, some digestive “issues”, and a feeling of tension/ pressure just beneath the surface, located where I imagine my energy and physical bodies interfacing with each other.

Many of my clients have reported toska symptoms that include “random” waves of intense emotions and accompanying releases (like, crying off and on for days), physical exhaustion, cognitive impairment (i.e. reading the same sentence like five times without remembering it), amplification of spiritual activity in their homes (particularly at night), and an overall sense of dissatisfaction or discomfort in daily life.

Recently, everyone’s toska seems to be seriously complicated by absolute fuckery in mundane reality: relentless fire drills at work, failed attempts at actually taking a weekend off “for once”, system-wide technical issues that require hours-long (and very painful) calls to solution with various customer service departments, identity fraud and digital theft via credit card data, and so on.

My take on this whole toska trend and these seemingly mutually-opposing forces?

As many of us are expanding spiritually and energetically— and making some serious contact with the world of Woo— the structures underpinning our material reality are coming undone in spectacular (and sometimes violent) fashion.

And I don’t think these phenomena are unrelated. In fact, I think they’re intrinsically connected, potentially indicating a reality-shaking event (or series of events) looming just on the horizon line. Perhaps “reality” is coming undone because many of us are embodying more of this high vibration, neon electric Woo Woo energy— and making contact with some very old and very powerful gods who seem keen on, well, coming to visit.

If nothing else, if you’ve been feeling the toska “ick” in the last few weeks, I hope it brings you some modicum of comfort to know that you’re not alone.

I mean, looking out this morning at what used to be my TOTEM Flower Essence garden just a day after we spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars on yard work to get it all up to snuff in time for this weekend’s comedy show during the previous week, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. You see, we had what can only be described as a Biblical hail storm late last night that shredded all plant life— not to mention took the paint off of buildings and cracked many, many car windows and windshields up and down the streets of my Austin neighborhood.

But, as I reflected on the concept of toska and the presence of Prometheus as a spirit guide for me, I remembered what he went through— and what he endured like a pro. No complaining. No bitching. Just straight up tough guy, stone-faced energy as he was ritually disemboweled every damn day while tied to the mountain against his will.

I mean, I’m not chained to the side of a mountain for eons having my liver eaten out on a daily basis by an eagle, so I guess I’m doing alright, right?

Besides, it’s not all bad news, suffering and immobility. In fact, some seriously good stuff seems to be happening, too.

The Seed Money Dream

One of these good signs is what I’m referring to as the “Seed Money Dream.”

So, you know how I mentioned above that one of my toska symptoms is near-constant astral travel in my sleep? Well, about a week ago, I had quite an experience— and it was with my primary spirit guide of the moment: Prometheus.

In this astral scene, I accompanied Prometheus to a tall office building in a city. We entered, took the elevator, and quickly found ourselves several doors— and security layers— within an office reminiscent of the old school jeweler I worked for in Chicago during summers in high school. There were glass display cases lining the walls of the space, filled with all manner of strange, astral ephemera merchandised as though they were priceless jewels: an unnamed mushroom, a rusty piece metal tool of unknown purpose, and so on.

I was sitting at one of the lower display cases with Prometheus, who had requested he be given access to some kind of astral safety deposit box. He opened it, revealing multiple small baggies labeled with various words and names. He pulled out two bags of seeds with my name on them, seemed to get frustrated, and asked the manager of this strange object-exchange about where the third was.

I found a third bag with my name on it, but it was filled with hematite crystal shavings and not seeds— when I lifted it to show it to him, Prometheus just shook his had and said, “No, that’s not it. I mean, you can just take that one with you regardless, but I need the other, other bag for you, too.”

He then got the third bag from the manager, organizing them and telling me, “These are part of your inheritance, and I’m giving them to you now that the checkered flag has been waved.” He then seemed to go through a “cashing out” process with the manager, who weighed the bags filled with strange, alien seeds to see how much money (or whatever currency “they” do business in) was due in exchange.

The next day, I sat around in the morning seriously reflecting on this scene. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was intensely significant, and at one point I yelled, “I got it!” like a maniac, giving my husband quite a scare.

I said, “It’s seed money! Get it? Like, the kind of money you get to start a new business or venture? I think that’s the point of the transaction I was present for!”

I spent another 30 minutes wondering what the hell this “seed money” was for— and, more importantly, when it was going to arrive! I mean, running a small Woo-based business doesn’t exactly afford you the lifestyle of Scrooge McDuck, diving into a pool of cash in your basement.

Later that morning, my husband and I went to our local crystal emporium, where I secured a large and beautiful piece of hematite for good measure. I try to do a few literal things like this after an astral travel event of note, assuming that the presence of hematite in the astral adventure wasn’t an accident.

That same day, I counted at least seven references to a checkered flag (on podcasts, ads on YouTube, billboards along the highway from the crystal shop, etc.), finally realizing I didn’t know what the hell a checkered flag was even for. So, I asked my husband, who seemed taken aback at yet another weird blind spot of mine, explaining to me that the checkered flag was waved at the end of a race— a horse race, a car race, etc..

Huh.

The race was over, because the checkered flag was waved. But a race for what? To where? From where? Who is racing? Is it a competition? If so, what is the prize? I still don’t have these answers, but the days to follow would shed light on a significant shift.

One of these shifts would involve my husband doing possibly the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. He received a small inheritance after his mother’s recent passing, and asked me to allow him to pay what’s left of my student loan balance. I’ve been paying these loans off since I was 20 years old— and I worked full-time to pay for school while I was attending as well. It’s been a long, often very hard haul requiring me to grind, multi-task, and be super duper efficient with my time and energies in a kind of contiguous, nonstop push across the decades.

It really felt like the end of at least one long race, and I was starting to understand the whole checkered flag thing in real time.

But then, in the spirit of toska, the proverbial Woo shit hit the fan yet again.

Signs on the sidewalk

Left: photo taken on nearby sidewalk 3 weeks ago; Right: yesterday's "new" sidewalk message

Some background: ever since the Seed Money Dream, I have felt an unusual, near-constant pulse of electricity throughout my body. This electrical “thrumming” has been so strong that my husband can feel it through my shins and feet as we sit on the couch together, with him often gently wincing and asking me something to the effect of, “This is what you’ve been feeling? It’s really uncomfortable.”

Throughout this thrumming over the last several days, I’ve had more than one moment of concern when it entered my kidney and heart areas, forcing me to seriously consider whether or not I was having, like, a real medical issue.

While trying to relax and kind of get away from the unnerving physical symptoms of toska, I decided it was best to go on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday morning.

On this walk, I came across a strange message on the sidewalk (see above on the right). At first glance, it looked like it said, “Jehovahs”— a seeming plural of one of the Biblical names of God, Jehovah. Jehovah is a “Latinization” of the Hebrew יְהֹוָה‎ Yəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה‎ (YHWH), considered to be the proper name of the God of the Bible.

It means, roughly speaking, “I Am”. So, in this context, it would be “I Ams” in the plural, which is nuts. Not to mention terrible grammar.

Seeing this made me remember an earlier sidewalk message, painted in Runes (see photo above, on left). I had sent a photo of these Runes to one of my current coaching clients a few weeks ago for her to study and interpret, but I hadn’t personally given it very much thought.

So, when I got back from my walk and feeling the bodily electricity ramp back up, I decided to revisit these Runes and see if I could decipher their meaning:

(Runes from left to right):

1. Thurisaz: Representing the thorn or the giant, Thurisaz indicates an enemy, a threat, evil, torment, cruelty, unconsciousness, rage, harm and suffering— but also a potential defense against these same forces.

2. Uruz: Representing the wild ox, Uruz is a powerful symbol of wildness, chaos, disruption, challenge, strength, courage, determination, imbalance and loss. Uruz is effectively raw nature’s ability to disrupt through an excess of an element, like water (floods) or air (tornado).

3. Ingwaz: Representing the seed, Ingwaz is a symbol of prosperity, fertility, peace, order, sexuality, pleasure, celebration, responsibility and respect, and often represents the raw potential for growth in all good things. This was particularly noteworthy considering the very recent Seed Money Dream.

4. Hagalaz: This son-of-a-bitch Rune represents hail and all that it symbolizes: turmoil, conflict, harshness, drama, toughness, endurance, perspective, and nonconsensual release.

I remember reflecting on these and feeling like they were chronological sign posts leading up to a coming event. I could see how the first three Runes had manifested for me in the recent past (and in this precise order, from left to right), with the whole Seed Money Dream being marked by the Ingwaz— aka seed— Rune.

I instantly got a pit in my stomach realizing that the only one left to close out this particular little Rune-based prophecy was Hagalaz…hail. What form would this destruction take? A total meltdown of the economy? World War 3? My bank going insolvent? Etsy shuttering its digital doors?

Turns out, it was just a bunch of fucking hail…that ruined my TOTEM Flower Essence Garden and undid years of hard work just ahead of us hosting a nice event in our yard:

So, while this sucked (and continues to suck, as we can’t yet rake the leaves and bag them because we’re expecting more fun hail and rain and bullshit overnight), it was a clear period on the end of that Rune sentence, confirming my intuition that this particular sentence of Runes had come to an end.

Now we just had to figure out what a plural “Jehovahs” means. And, if recent history is any indication of future trends, it’s likely to be kind of literal.

Which is, to be clear, equal parts exciting and terrifying to a working shaman like me.

Looks like we’re in for a wild ride this summer, folks! And with that wild ride, we’re going to need some help from a few of our metaphysical friends:

TOTEM Tarot Cards + Flower Essences for the Sagittarius Full Moon

Left: Ace of Metals card from our TOTEM Tarot Deck; Right: Rain Maker card from our TOTEM Flower Essence Deck

Whether you’re the Arthurian sword in the stone, an ancient god of prophecy chained to a mountain, or a small, Woo-based business owner waiting for the universe to “make it rain”— but maybe not hail— for you, it all comes down to a belief in inevitable success— and faith in the mechanics of the universe.

The Ace of Metals card from our TOTEM Tarot Deck represents the “seed of victory as yet unseen.” And boy oh boy do I need this reminder as we approach June’s Sagittarius Full Moon. This whole Wood Snake Year has felt like one giant test of my will and commitment to my work at TOTEM, featuring frequent setbacks and flare ups that seem to consume all of my primordial life energy— and a solid portion of my usually robust sense of humor.

I mean, everyone has a lifetime limit on how many times they can turn the proverbial lemons into lemonade without going totally postal.

I just surpassed mine.

The Ace of Metals card is also very Promethean, reminding me of the power of steadfastness, faith in prophecy, and “keeping still” like the mountain. When there is no where else to go and nothing else to do, we must hold the line— and work to embody an active state of surrender so as to maintain our central point of power and not give up before we’ve reached the finish line— and that fucking checkered flag.

The Rain Maker card from our TOTEM Flower Essence Deck— and our TOTEM Flower Essence Spray of the same name— features the magical desert creosote plant, known for it’s magical ability to conjure both literal rainstorms and metaphorical rain-making in terms of financial abundance.

Now, I’m not going to be doing a rain dance anytime soon for fear that the sky will literally crash down on me like Chicken Little, but I am comforted by this card’s presence in a pull for the coming Full Moon— feeling a little relief around the edges of the toska. As a small, Woo-based business owner, the dream of receiving new opportunities for prosperity and abundance is about as good as it gets, so I’ll be spraying some Rain Maker and talking to the sacred creosote in jars on my closet for the next few weeks…or months…or however long it takes to get more of the good than the bad.

It’s worth noting: these cards, modalities and flower essences can’t undo toska, nor can they necessarily make “keeping still” fun or pleasant. They can, however, put things into their proper context, arm us with proper insight, and help us to embody and integrate the discomfort while we are “in it”.

These cards are also a powerful reminder of the dangerous allure of toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing, helping us take a moment to remember that sometimes the only way out is actually through the damn thing.

To this end, you might find yourself taking some time away from modalities, teachers or friends that cannot seem to simply hold space for toska leading up to the Sagittarius Full Moon. Many in the New Age World cannot resist the urge to offer you false profundities, platitudes or pie in the sky “reasons why” something gutting and painful is happening to you while it’s actually happening to you, a toxic trait that does little more than irritate the already-suffering.

That said, it’s best to feel the feelings, accept the objective reality, and then— when you’re good and ready— let it go on your own time table and in your own way.

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When the daily struggle becomes an active surrender

The word “surrender” often conjures the vibe of giving up— or simply allowing fate to do what it will, as it pleases.

But, in the context of I Ching hexagram 52. Ken/ Keeping Still, Mountain, it’s about maintaining a peaceful heart and internal homeostasis in spite of the tectonic tensions fighting it out just below the surface, in the seismic layers of the unseen earth.

In this way, the daily struggle we find ourselves in at the present can be transmuted into an act of active surrender: embodying the strength and stability of a mountain in spite of what life— and the Woo— has to throw at us. After all, the mountain does not bend to avoid the wind. It does not move to allow a river to flow. It does not leave its position to come and meet you out in the wilderness. It does not change its nature with the shifts in the seasons.

Likewise, we need to stand in our place and in our power, too. We need to calmly, peacefully take up space and, in this spirit, stop tolerating the intolerable.

This will feel like a super hard balancing act between two powerful, opposing forces— but, in practice, it is the literal key to unlocking the value of toska.

This year has presented me with some very novel and very challenging challenges, which is really saying something considering that my life hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing up to this point. But I’m still here, doing what I’m doing, and I have no plans to give up or change it up at this stage of the game.

That said, I’m very, very tired. And checkered flags, Runes, or astral seed inheritances aren’t going to change that very physical reality anytime soon. So, I’m going to work on surrendering where I can, allowing others to do and help and let go of anything I don’t need to be doing at the present.

This, in turn, I hope will help me integrate whatever this Woo energy is that seems to be flowing through me and the natural world with an unusual flourish.

If you’ve been dealing with toska and the unpleasant ephemera of a seemingly collapsing material reality, I invite you to keep still like the mountain with me this Sagittarius Full Moon. I mean, I’m not sure we can outsmart or outrun whatever *this* is (gestures around at literally everything), so we might as well find a way to hold the shitstorm, right?

Besides: so many of you wonderful people have shown up to support TOTEM in our time of unexpected need, posting about our online store on social media and buying some of our TOTEM Flower Essences to help us start to make up the gap we’ll need to cover to reinvest in the garden post-hailstorm and keep on making our magical potions in the future.

And if you want to help out after our nightmare weather attack, we don’t need charity or anything like that. Despite being tired and bitchy, I’m still relatively able-minded and able-bodied and, therefore, able to work.

I just appreciate support via our Etsy shop, Amazon (where our decks are published), through paid subscriptions here on Substack, or via ratings and reviews for any of the aforementioned stuff as well as our podcast, The Skeptical Shaman.

And if you do write a review, please remember to screenshot it and send it to me via email before 6/26 to enter to win one of three Grand Prizes for our Review Raffle: rachel@totemreadings.com

It hasn’t been an easy year, but every time I start to freak out under the cumulative load I remember: at least I’m not Prometheus. That shit sounded like it sucked.

And, if he could do that just to give us humans the gift of the “fire of the gods”, then I can surely manage at Etsy shop and do some readings and handle a shitty hailstorm, right?

Right.

-Rachel

[Image credit: all created images above in this post are from artist Mac Baconai (@Macbaconai on X). Photos are my own].