Romance

Who says romance is dead? Probably people who just don't "get it".

ro·man·tic —adjective

1. conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.

2. of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.

3. relating to or denoting the artistic and literary movement of romanticism.

4. a person with romantic beliefs or attitudes.

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The word “romance” is thoroughly misunderstood by our modern society. At best, it conjures up images of Hallmark cards, boxes of chocolates, cheesy red roses, and heart emojis. At it’s darkest, it conjures up memories of those local Chicago TV commercials for Sybaris Suites, renovated airport Holiday Inn buildings offering middle-aged suburban couples a so-called “romantic weekend” in a shitty hotel room with a sauna with a water slide? For like, $50?

Sad, sad… and very bad thoughts I can never un-think. Bells I can never unring in my mind’s eye. Vignettes of flesh-eating bacteria and bestial horrors that shall haunt me until my dying breath.

No wonder so many people are repelled by the notion of “romance”.

But the concept— and energy— of romance is actually pretty awesome, and it’s certainly making an appearance as we head towards the August 1st Full Moon in Aquarius.

For our recent Aquarius Full Moon Tarot Reading preview HERE on Substack, the Two of Moons card from our TOTEM Tarot Deck made an “unexpected” appearance (wink wink) as the overarching theme and connecting narrative thread for the month ahead.

And, as you may have noted in our companion Aquarius Full Moon Deep Dive post, titled The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the heart chakra is about to have its moment. With it, acts of love, expanding compassion, surging empathy, artistic expression, creation, and righteous indignance on behalf of the innocent will also be entering center stage, so it’s a great time to dig into the world of romance.

Which begs the question: what the hell even is love?

Well, to start, love is not inert. It’s not a static state. Rather, love is an active verb, and one that specifically kindles the purpose of protecting, elevating and rejoicing in that which is most beautiful about the human experience. Like our Two of Moons TOTEM Tarot Deck card shows, we demonstrate love and learn about love and get better at being loving by interacting one-on-one with other humans.

And that interaction doesn’t have to be sexual to count. In fact, sexual love may not be the best or purest manifestation of this energy in any case.

In his work Nicomachean Ethics, Greek philosopher Aristotle asserted that platonic friendship was the “highest form of love”, pointing to the lack of transactional commerce as the bedrock of his belief. In other words: platonic love is a “good in and of itself” because it’s not a “means to an end”.

When it’s real, platonic love is pure.

You simply love the person, support them and demonstrate loyalty to them because you feel compelled to do so. Because you admire them. You enjoy their company. They inspire something in you, and the two of you converge and your energy bodies intermingle to produce an elevating result greater than the sum of its parts.

However different this other person— and our Two of Moons card’s illustration suggests they will be different— platonic love enables us to appreciate them for their differences. Delight in their variation. And, from there, we learn and converse and dialogue and bond and evolve.

This is a romantic virtue, to pursue and maintain relationships because of their intrinsic value. It brings out the fucking best in us. Elevates us from our daily drudgery and scarcity and fear-based thinking and banality into a state of impish creativity, of expression and fun and support and dynamic interaction.

It’s one of the few vestiges we have that isn’t all about productivity, survival, or usery.

In friendship, other people spark our curiosity in the human condition. Our friends teach us things about ourselves and about life more broadly. It is through this intersection of friendship that we conjure up poetry, art, movie scripts, or simply our better angels.

I think this dynamic is best displayed by my favorite comedian, Tim Dillon’s, interview with the fascinating Lex Fridman.

Tim is severely black-pilled, cynical, acerbic, apocalyptic and cutting. I mean, I said he’s my favorite comedian, so you do the math. But this is probably the precise reason Lex does the most genius thing I’ve ever seen a podcast host do to kick off an interview: read Tim a super sweet and deep poem by Charles Bukowski, and totally throw the cynical, defense-mechanismed clown off-balance:

Now, Tim is gay but Lex isn’t. In fact, Lex is a robotics and AI engineer, so I’m not even sure he has a sexuality.

But it’s a very unexpected, very sweet, very romantic moment, isn’t it? And, of course, Tim does exactly what I would do, which is make it dark and stupid as quickly as possible to dissipate any gathering cloud of the meaningful or emotional…or romantic.

We need more of this in our world and, thankfully, I think it’s coming with this Aquarius Full Moon. I think our little bluebirds that we all keep locked up in our chests are going to come squeaking out, wanting to interact with each other.

In fact, I’ve been sensing this for more than a minute.

And, in a potentially career-destroying move, I have a confession to make:

I’m a romantic.

I love connecting with and interacting with other people one-on-one, which is one of the primary drivers for my shamanic practice. I have the unique privilege of talking with my clients in a very vulnerable, very deep way almost every day of the week. There is no small talk. There is no sales funnel or scale or reach to think of or speak of. It’s just two people, talking about insanely consequential spiritual stuff, letting it all hang out.

And this is why I wanted to start The Skeptical Shaman podcast. As I was thinking through my one-on-one experiences with TOTEM and the examples that came to mind, I realized there was a big gap in this space: vulnerable, public conversations between women that aren’t cynically scripted out to produce the maximum business ROI.

In a way, The Skeptical Shaman came into being because I’ve tried to listen to woo podcasts hosted by and with other women…and they kind of suck. Like, not all of them. Obviously. But it’s not the vulnerable, romantic, funny dynamic I get from shows like Real Ones, or The Lex Fridman Podcast, or other offerings that are otherwise summarily dismissed as being examples of “toxic masculinity”. The clip above didn’t feel that toxic to me. In fact, it was really touching. And it didn’t feel like an infomercial or promotion for an upcoming retreat.

Because it was real.

I want women to have this, too. I want the listeners of The Skeptical Shaman to hear my sincere affection and respect for the individuals I interview, even if we don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. To wit, those differences are part of what make romance so interesting, anyways. Like the Two of Moons tarot card, we each have something unique to bring to the dialogue and to the dynamic.

After all: if we were exactly the same, the Venn diagram would just be a circle, wouldn’t it?

And nothing happens in a circle, does it? A walled garden. A closed loop.

That is, until the other circle shows up.

Just wanted to share before I got going on something else. The Aquarius Full Moon Tarot Reading I posted to Substack today had a pretty intense, important feeling to it.

As did this concept of love, friendship and romance.

The heart chakra is about to have its day, ladies and gentlemen. Get ready.

-Rachel