On self-fidelity, authenticity, receptivity & guardianship
Exploring the Chariot and oppositional tension with Gabriela De Golia
We may be a few weeks into our Strength year, but the themes woven into the Chariot are still quite relevant as we transition into 2024.
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Gabriela De Golia of The Betwixt & Between, a spiritual care provider and tarot reader working at the intersection of sacred devotion and collective liberation. Gabriela is also an artist, ritualist, and learning facilitator who’s worked as a public policy advocate, leftist activist, community organizer, and laborer in monasteries, churches, and other spiritual settings. She offers care in 1:1 and group settings, helping clients embody their deepest knowing and co-create a world where all beings are truly free.
We explore Chariot themes like pursuing nontraditional career paths, embodying our contradictions, authenticity and social media, the relationship between the self and the collective, what "alignment" feels like on an embodied level, and so much more.
As part of the conversation, Gabriela shares ritual practices that fall into the categories of "receptivity" and "guardianship." She also shares a blessing for self-fidelity that she wrote based on her connection to the Chariot card.
I condensed and edited our discussion below for reading flow, and you can listen to the full discussion in the audio file. I’m so grateful to Gabriela for spending time with me in conversation and reflection.
—Hannah
The Chariot anthology is available and shipping now — you’ll get 120 pages of personal essays, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, prose, erotica, original artwork, a ritual guide, original tarot spreads, and journaling prompts.
An interview with Gabriela De Golia
Hannah: Let’s talk about our initial relationships with the Chariot card. It was difficult for me to connect with this card, and the practice of working on the Chariot anthology for The Rebis has expanded my perspective. Chariot keywords like “success, victory, determination, willpower” felt familiar to me as someone who grew up with so much ambition to prove myself and ascend the corporate ladder. But the more that I began personally unraveling my socially constructed notions of success, the less I related to the card and the more distant it felt.
Gabriela: I’ve had a somewhat similar journey with the Chariot in the sense that when I first encountered tarot while living in a Zen monastery, I was immediately enamored with the imagery of it — the starry crown, the two beasts of oppositional colors, a person who is journeying away from a familiar landscape into an unknown place. It represents being on the precipice of some new journey or adventure. It was really hard for me to connect with the classic interpretations of “success, willfulness, drive.” When I encountered tarot, I had recently begun a process of going to recovery spaces (I’m in a recovery fellowship), and within those contexts, there is a very important element of relinquishing willfulness as a way of ultimately becoming more free.
In America, “the land of the free” has often translated to “I get to do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want.” It’s this notion of freedom as unboundaried willfulness. I have many issues with that on a political level, and also on a spiritual level. Being in a program that invites me to relinquish wilfulness in favor of attunement to the will of something far greater than me — those classic definitions of the Chariot card were rubbing up against some stuff that I was trying to unlearn.
Eventually, I did encounter people who had alternative understandings of the card. The first one that stood out to me was Jessa Crispin, who wrote The Creative Tarot, and with artist Jen May created the Spolia Tarot. I fell in love with that book and that version of the card — I have a tattoo that’s a rendition of Spolia Tarot’s Chariot. One thing I love about Jessa’s description is that she explains the physics and science of a chariot as a vehicle that can only be propelled forward if the beasts pulling it run in opposite directions. It's the tension generated there that offers the forward movement.
It felt so mind-blowingly apt for me, as someone who’s a Virgo Sun and Pisces Rising, which are literally opposite ends of the astrological wheel. I’ve often felt like a complete contradiction within myself (for example, I love to talk, I love being quiet, and I’m a minimalist who collects a lot of things). The idea of the Chariot as being a vehicle that is generative because of oppositional tension, that it can go places because there's this fruitful dynamic — it helped me embrace myself a lot more.
The Chariot is the act of letting go of a certain path that has been thoroughly laid out and prepared for you.
Finally, Sarah Cargill’s interpretation of the card as the one who chooses their authentic path over the familiar paths imposed on us by culture, by family, etc, also really hit home for me. I’m someone who no longer lives where I grew up, and I’ve taken a lot of different paths away from what was expected of me. The day before I got my Chariot tattoo, I unexpectedly had to drop out of a grad school program that I was initially very committed to. The Chariot is the act of letting go of a certain path that has been thoroughly laid out and prepared for you. You can get in your vehicle and apply choice and will in a manner that is aligned with something far greater than what you might ultimately understand in that moment — you can go to a realm that you didn’t necessarily plan to go to, but one you are being guided to.
Hannah: I wrote down a quote about the Chariot from Jessica Dore’s book Tarot for Change, which dramatically changed how I read the cards. She writes, “Where willpower may have worked well for you to get through the obstacle course of your schooling, or the career path you chose before you had any idea your life wasn't just an extension clipped onto someone else's definition of success, that moment you decide you want to do something different with your life is the moment you realize you're going to need a new set of skills, ones for navigation and wayfinding.”
I think there are a lot of parallels here with your journey — you’re figuring things out like What are your values? What are your beliefs? What is the most authentic expression of who you are? I think it’s really hard to step away from the goals we set out for ourselves. I grew up in a culture where longevity and commitment are correlated with success — I was surrounded by people who had been in jobs and marriages for 20+ years. When I was a kid, I tried and quit a lot of activities and was made to feel shame for that. Now, I identify as a multipotentialite, where I try a lot of different things and just know that it’s part of who I am — I like to try things on, research, go deep, and then dip out. My whole life I was told “you have to stick with things” and I became really scared of change, really scared of changing my mind, really scared of doing things that other people perceived to be “different.”
When I was in college, I had an overwhelming sense of wanting to pursue an unconventional path for myself — I went to school for journalism, then dropped out and transferred colleges, and I was in this very emotional state of limbo. And I wrote in my journal, “Is it still success if no one thinks it’s successful but me?” I think I’m still reckoning with that question. Releasing the Western notion of success as status/power/recognition has taken a lot of effort. I’m curious how that’s felt for you, as someone who has made a lot of different career transitions.
Gabriela: I’m constantly reevaluating my definition of success! In the same way that I’m in a recovery program that people classically associate with substance use, I think most of us are in recovery from modernity’s notions of so much, including success. It’s not like I’m “recovered,” and then I’m done. There’s always another layer of recovering to do. Especially from things related to capitalism and the completely misaligned practices of modernity that don’t support the flourishing ecosystems of collectives. It’s always a process of redefining things.
What came to mind as I was hearing you speak about commitment versus change is that I’ve danced with that as well. I’ve had many careers, I have many different skills. People on the outside wonder how they all connect — but for me, when I can deepen into the taproot that connects all of my different interests and skills, my studies of science, politics, and religion in undergrad and grad school … they’re all different approaches to answering: How does a part relate to a whole? How do the many relate to the one? A citizen and a state. An individual and their god. A plant and an ecosystem. What is the relationship between the singular and the multiple?
When I can feel the essence of my own interests and pursuits, the notions of commitment and change really shift — because I’m actually being loyal to that question. The methodology by which I’m answering it is shifting, yet the fundamental loyalty is still there. But a capitalist, modern paradigm might not see that, so it only registers my behavior as “you’re being flaky, you can’t commit.”
Much of modernity is influenced by the Enlightenment, where God is false, rationality is supreme, there’s no animacy to the world, no sacredness to our experience, everything can be proven through mathematics — and that got me so far until it didn’t. The more I lean into my spirituality, which tarot has hugely influenced, the more I clarify the essential taproot that is guiding my seemingly disparate pursuits and interests. I have a much clearer sense of what I am loyal to. And I know that I am being loyal to myself, which has helped me hold notions of success very differently. I no longer feel quite so bound by what other people think of me.
Hannah: When you feel that sense of loyalty, that sense of alignment — can you describe what that feels like from an embodied sensation? And when you’re out of alignment, when you’re feeling friction around whatever choice you’ve made, whatever doesn’t feel right for you — what does that feel like?
Gabriela: When I have landed in an experience of alignment … the word that’s coming to mind is “spacious.” When I am not able to clarify for myself what I value or how I want to embody those things that I value, it can feel like existential claustrophobia. I feel trapped in my head, trapped in a dynamic.
I think that sometimes friction is fruitful, you can be honed and forged by it in a way that is ultimately helpful — like how alchemists use fire. That’s where I think friction is sometimes a good sign, because maybe we’re bumping up against an edge. Friction is what ultimately helps get through to that other side, where you can say, “Oh, this is what it feels like to remember” — and by that I mean remember intellectually, but also “re-member,” meaning to bring members or ligaments together. (“Remember” is a somatic term for bringing pieces back together.) It feels spacious. It’s like when people talk about that moment in acupuncture when the energy point is hit and the energy is suddenly able to flow once more after a blockage. But I spent much of my life not feeling spacious like this, so sometimes it’s a really deep practice of recognizing when I’m not in alignment.
Hannah: It’s funny that what can sometimes feel like home is what’s not meant for us, because that feeling of something not working feels natural.
Gabriela: Totally. One example of that is the home that I live in now, which my spouse and I bought in early 2020. When I hit the two-year mark of living here, I started to have some minor panic attacks, and I couldn't figure out why until I remembered that, for many complicated reasons, I had not lived anywhere this long since high school. Constantly moving was a way for me to offer myself protection from stuff that I needed some protection from, and also demons in my head that were chasing me all the time. So leaning into stability was pretty freaky. It wasn’t familiar, and it went counter to the practice of moving all the time because that’s what felt safe.
This is what I mean by friction. I could have chosen to move out, listen to the panic, jump ship — or I could stay after recognizing that this fear was coming up and contributing to the panic attacks. I stuck with that, leaned into it, and saw what it was trying to teach me. And then, on the other side, after staying with that friction, I found that I had a deeper sense of spaciousness than I could have found had I kept running and running and running.
This is the Chariot to me — it’s the practice of applying your own skill and your own effort to get somewhere and do something, but it’s also how we allow ourselves to move away from that which is familiar, both the things that were not fruitful for us and even things we thought were good but are not fruitful for us.
My favorite part of the Chariot is those two beasts at the front that are oppositional colors, and how the Charioteer stands right in the middle of those two beasts. It’s always such a deep, important reminder for me that I can feel afraid when I’m coming up against an edge, and I can also feel excited to be at that edge, knowing there’s something on the other side of it. The multiplicity and the simultaneity of those two things are not contradictory, but complementary. This has helped me find a sense of liberation within myself.
What do we need to release to fully feel safe in our bodies, to comfort ourselves? And what actions do we need to take when we feel afraid so that we can sit with fear?
Hannah: I’ve had a lot of self-dialogue and dialogue in community around this idea of fear. Which fears are useful and informative, which fears we should stay with, sit with, allow in and create space around… and which fears are “valid” fears, where you feel a true sense that something is not safe, that you need to put up a boundary, that you need to make a change or take action. It’s hard to be discerning when you are so typically conditioned to run from anything that feels unsafe.
Something that you said reminded me of the Chariot association with Cancer and the concept of home. Cancer is represented by a crab in the zodiac, and that hard exterior shell that we all carry around is connected to the sense that we carry our home in our bodies. Everyone’s sense of home is so different, but at a very basic level, if we can feel safe in our bodies, if we can feel comfortable in our bodies and in touch with our bodies, we can cultivate a sense of belonging within ourselves. I’m just at the beginning stage of this journey, of forging my relationship with my body.
Many of us are so disassociated, right? We’re not taught how to connect with ourselves in these ways. What do we need to release to fully feel safe in our bodies, to comfort ourselves? And what actions do we need to take when we feel afraid so that we can sit with fear? Whether it’s spiritual practices like tarot, comfort in relationships, or physical comfort — like certain foods or certain small rituals or grounding exercises. I’m curious: what are your personal behaviors and rituals that you do when you are sitting with fear?
Gabriela: I want to reference the artwork in Pamela Coleman Smith’s Chariot card here — the Chariot is very exposed. It’s open, and it’s in an open setting. But the Charioteer is wearing some beautiful armor. They’re not just this person who’s like, “Come eviscerate me, I’m here for the taking.” They’ve clearly embarked on a journey that one can only assume might be stirring up some fear, because they’re going off in a direction that’s different from the protection of the city walls. They’re alone, yet they’ve been diligent in figuring out for themselves what they need to be protected.
This is something that we, as a culture — at least in the modern West — have not been adequately taught: what it means to open ourselves up to mystery in a way that helps us discern what is frightening from what is unsafe, because those are potentially not the same thing. Not everything frightening is unsafe, and not everything unsafe comes across as frightening. In fact, we're actively taught to think of certain things as “totally fine” when they're really not safe. The Chariot card is an example of someone who’s done their homework — they’re someone who’s saying, “I’m open to receiving whatever it is I’m meant to receive on this journey, outside city walls… but I’m also going to do some due diligence here.” They’re standing in a way that emulates an inner sovereignty and power. It reads: “Don’t come at me if you’re not prepared.”
I think these two things are important to any personal journey: the willingness to be open while also knowing when and how to be protected.
I think these two things are important to any personal journey: the willingness to be open while also knowing when and how to be protected. I have many, many ritual practices that fall into the categories of “receptivity” and “guardianship.” Receptivity is about how I open myself to receiving guidance from a process, or a power, or a source (whatever you want to call it), that is ultimately far vaster than me and my mortal, ephemeral self. Guardianship is how I invite practices that help me shield myself from forces, or processes, or powers that I don’t want to be influenced by. These two things are very related, but they can come up differently.
For receptivity, practices like tarot, journaling, and dreamwork are useful — they invite curiosity and reflection. For guardianship, I recite prayers of protection and do spellwork. Some might call prayer a spell — to me, it’s stating: “This is the parameter that I’m setting around myself. May I be protected within this space.”
Within a modern context, we are fed so much information that aims to strip us of our sense of agency and our sense of power, so people can make a profit off of us. I’m not on social media, and I don’t really check the news myself. I have sources that I consent to receive news from, people who I know read the news chronically, and I ask them about what’s going on. If I don’t guard the gates of my consciousness with diligence (without veering into obsessive perfectionism, of course) — if I’m not careful with the content that I’m consuming, the content is going to start to control me. It’s going to color my vision of the world in a way that dismembers my sense of agency, sovereignty, and power.
This isn’t me saying everyone should get off social media, not at all — it’s just that I’ve had experiences where I felt that I was intruded upon against my consent. I don’t feel comfortable on social media because those are platforms where, no matter how hard you try, they’re still trying to make a profit off of you, and they’re giving you advertisements that you didn’t consent to, and they’re suggesting people to follow that you don’t want to follow. It’s often just too much for me. Being off of social media is a practice of protective guardianship for my own consciousness, my own sense of power, because I made a vow to myself that I will do what I can to honor my sovereignty by not putting myself in situations where I am non-consensually intruded upon as much as I can.
Hannah: It makes a lot of sense. I do use social media, for community building and relationship building, and it’s hard to hold the boundary. It’s hard to use it for those purposes and not feel like all of the other noise, all of the other voices on there, are penetrating my consciousness.
With this last issue of The Rebis, I invited folks to weave in other cards that are related to the Chariot. We have the Tower as a key connection as well as the Minor Sevens. And as you were talking about guardianship, I had this image of the Seven of Wands — this energetic sense of holding a boundary, of understanding what energy is yours and what energy is not yours, and feeling that ownership, feeling that sense of control over what you allow to come at you and what you’re going to block out.
I feel very conflicted about social media. After I released the Wheel of Fortune issue in 2022, I went dark on social, took all apps off my phone. I had been using Instagram to build an audience and connect — there were many positive upsides, I met so many of my contributors there, I used it to find artists I would have not come across otherwise, and I used it to introduce the publication to the general public. There was so much discovery, and that’s one of the beneficial aspects of social media. But I was in comparison mode, and I felt overwhelmed by the idea of building a brand on social media. I felt conflicted over what type of content to create, conflicted over where I had authority and where I didn’t have authority when it came to spiritual topics. And I took a big rest from it, knowing that it would stop some of my momentum, knowing that by totally disengaging and not posting for multiple months the algorithm gods would hurt my discoverability on the platform.
But a funny thing happened: I have this newsletter — you can find it here on the Substack network, and it’s linked from our website and our social media pages. But when I went dark I wasn’t publishing any newsletters, or posting to Substack or social media, and yet I continued to have this slow drip of subscribers and of people purchasing the publication. It kept gently flowing in. It felt like a really beautiful reminder. Yes, I could sacrifice a lot to push hard, to gain momentum, to move the Chariot fast, and hit all these milestones and metrics to sell more and do more — but there would be a personal cost. Or I could try to adhere to my values and feel into what is right and aligned and meant for me.
Eventually, I returned to social media after four months with this new perspective of just doing what I feel called to do. I don’t look at trends. I try not to compare myself to what other people are doing. I post what feels right, and I engage when I feel like engaging, and I disengage when I need a break. I took all notifications off my phone and that feeling of expansiveness and spaciousness in my body returned. That’s how I knew it was the right thing to do — I could suddenly see the possibility of staying on social media with those boundaries. So that was a mini Chariot journey for me.
Gabriela: I love what you’re saying. It is so Chariot in so many ways. When people hear I’m not on social media, they’re just like, “Oh my God, are you totally anti-social media?” and I’m not. I know the Black Lives Matter movement started as a tweet. There are so many things that happened through social media that I think are incredibly noteworthy and powerful. It’s just that for my own vessel, it’s not a good place for me to be. I love what you’re saying though, that you’re able to hold “both/and” — which is a Chariot statement, referencing the black and the white beasts again, with the person in the middle. Being able to hold that tension between “I really don’t like this, but maybe there’s something here for me, too.”
The Chariot speaks to the sacrifice of giving up what is familiar. Leaving the village where we grew up, the paradigms we were told were important — we sacrifice those familiar things in service of becoming more free.
You use the word “sacrifice” in terms of sacrificing a lot to stay on social media, and the word “sacrifice” has an enormous amount of charge. I’m an etymology nerd, and what I love about the word “sacrifice” is that it’s from the same root that means “sacred.” When we offer something up, when we relinquish something in an aligned manner to a veritable god as opposed to a false god, then the sacrifice ends up being a freeing event, a liberatory event — as opposed to sacrificing your time, your body, your resources to the false god of, you know, the Instagram algorithm. But when we sacrifice losing followers (or whatever it is we feel like we’re losing), in service of honoring our vessel as a divine vessel — then, lo and behold! You still can be in connection and be in community without trying nearly as hard.
The Chariot speaks to the sacrifice of giving up what is familiar. Leaving the village where we grew up, the paradigms we were told were important — we sacrifice those familiar things in service of becoming more free. That is hugely important work in an era where we are so doggedly told to worship the false gods of profit and consumerism and nationalism — all these things that are not veritable gods, even though people try to make they seem like they are.
This all speaks to what it means to be loyal to oneself, and to the vast mystery from which we emerge and to which we return — which ultimately supersedes the individual and also the nation-state and all human-made paradigms, right?
Hannah: It’s interesting — being in a state of surrender feels in opposition to the traditional “control” of the Chariot. Something that came up in a few pieces for The Chariot publication was the concept of how the charioteer stays in relationship with the two beasts. Are there reins, or not? In some tarot depictions, including Pamela Coleman Smith’s, there are no reins, no way for the charioteer to exert control over the beasts. In some there are reins, it just depends on how the artists interpret the card.
I ride horses, so the concept of control is relevant to me. When you first start riding, you learn that reins are the way to control a horse. But then you spend the rest of your time learning that actually, you need to be in more of an energetic alignment with the horse, that everything is much more subtle than you initially think, and that you need to use the reins very sparingly. It’s such a small nuance to how you control the horse.
What you were talking about reminded me of surrender, of the feeling that we are just one piece among a whole. To truly be part of that, there needs to be an acceptance that there are things we’re not going to know, things we’re not going to be able to control, and that the only thing in those moments that we can have ownership over is how we react, how we hold ourselves. This is a lifelong lesson for me.
Gabriela: Right. For me, as someone who is very much a recovering control-freak… I’ve come to understand controlling behaviors (even if they’re well-meaning, even if it’s all great in terms of the supposed political ideology behind it) as the human desire to be in a creative relationship with something gone awry. It’s not honoring the sovereignty of the other party, it’s not honoring the mutual need for each party to choose what will happen. So whenever I find myself veering into a place where the control freak in me comes back out, I ask myself: what might I do instead that is creative? And by creative, I mean an application of my choice and my “will” such that I allow mystery to delight me in what could happen. This allows for a more expansive possibility than what I alone with my mortal brain can imagine is possible.
This speaks to the Chariot again. They have done their due diligence, they have their armor on, they’ve packed their bag… and their Chariot is completely open to the elements, and they’re going off in some direction that’s not familiar. That is a creative process. To me, the energy that lands most for the Chariot is the one who is walking that line between “the black and the white” — between all the things that are seen as opposites — to be in a creative relationship with themselves and with the fact that they ultimately can’t control most things.
Hannah: Yes. You mentioned that we meet the charioteer in their Chariot, in the middle of their journey. They are not at their destination. There’s not even really a road. In many versions of the tarot card, we perceive movement because they’re in a vehicle, but they’re often shown at a standstill. There’s this sense of pause.
What you mentioned about being a control freak resonates because I call myself a recovering perfectionist — and I think part of me will always be a perfectionist, it’s just who I am. But all of the things we talked about today remind me that I’m in this continuous process of recovery. I’m learning what I need to do to loosen my grip so that I’m not so hard on myself.
Something about the idea of the Chariot being in the middle of their journey always felt challenging for me, because there’s a messiness to it. In the beginning, you kind of have a goal in mind, you’re in this fresh state. And then once you’ve arrived, there’s that milestone, that joy of completion and accomplishment. But we don’t see any of that with the Chariot. A writer I follow named
Gabriela: So, my business is called The Betwixt and Between, and the tagline is “spiritual care for liminal times.” I chose The Betwixt and Between, meaning the middle realm, the space between reality, because — while I think every generation is always in a liminal realm of some sort — where we are currently, in terms of world circumstance, it’s, like… whoa, everything is crumbling.
Hannah: We’re those figures on the Tower in a state of falling.
Gabriela: Totally. I love that you mentioned that card because what’s beautiful about the Tower is that if you flip it upside down, it looks like the people are dancing as they fly. So it’s just this matter of perspective: it can look like the most horrifying, debilitating situation. But if you change your perspective, it might be a moment where we are flying towards something different, and maybe beautiful.
I wanted my business to be focused on naming how we are collectively in a very liminal space because things are falling apart. And what is being built as that happens? This is mirrored in so many of our individual processes, where we’re reckoning with these paradigms that we were raised to abide by, and finding that we’re at the end of the road with them. Literally, the planet is in total catastrophe because we’ve gone past the end of the road.
When you get to that place, where things no longer work, where things are dying — this is when, in some traditions, you enter the Bardo, a middle realm where a map doesn’t matter anymore, doesn’t make sense, because a map doesn’t apply to the liminal. And how do you navigate the liminal? You have to trust in things that go far beyond what you were taught to think were sensible. And you have to open yourself to being well-met while also having those practices of protection.
This is so much of what we’re living through right now — learning how we navigate the liminal, how we meet ourselves and each other well in these incredibly messy spaces when, for centuries now, we’ve lived under modern Enlightenment principles where everything has to be orderly and we’re told the universe is a machine that we can calculate perfectly. But we’re now learning that is just not true — quantum mechanics and many scientific fields are showing us that the universe isn’t as predictable as we assumed it would be. So we’re being invited to walk through the Bardo, reevaluating all that we were taught to assume. That means that we have to learn entirely new skills and guard ourselves from the false gods while also opening ourselves to the veritable gods that are there to support us in this process of emergence.
In Christianity, the Book of Revelation is actually called the Book of Apocalypse in most languages. So apocalypse and revelation are the same: when something is crumbling it also means something is emerging. And like the charioteer, we must hold both of those at once — accepting that this is terrifying while also seeing the potential for unforeseen beauty. Can we let ourselves be in this space where both are happening at once, even though it’s confusing and terrifying? How can we let ourselves remain there? We can’t just jump the gun and get to the next comfortable place, because then we’re missing the opportunity for the really beautiful thing to emerge.
Hannah: These are the big questions! I think that we’re all trying to figure out what we need, how to resource ourselves, and how to be in service to others, how to meet others in community while this is all happening. Because if we’re only focusing on ourselves, if we’re only being self-reflective, it’s not going to work. With so many of these spiritual practices and spiritual journeys, with so much dialogue around healing right now that is happening more in the mainstream, at times it can feel self-serving. We have to look beyond ourselves. Something that I do keep coming back to, though, is that if I am not in alignment with myself, if I am not honoring myself and my needs, I'm unable to be in service to others. So it’s this balance, this state of equilibrium, of having to focus on my practices and surrender to those forces for myself. And then I’m able to allow myself to overflow, to fill other people’s cups.
I want to ease into a closing conversation related to the concept of self-fidelity. I’m interested in hearing about what that means for you at this moment. I also know you have a beautiful closing prayer to guide us through the end of our journey here.
Gabriela: To your point about the self and the collective — some people refer to these concepts as if they’re different things. But the self is only defined in relationship to the collective. No being becomes who they are without being in relationship with other beings.
I lived in a Zen Buddhist monastery, and a primary element of that tradition is remembering that there is no independent self. Every element of the self, like “oh, this is me, Gabriela” — when you break it down, that piece of “Gabriela” was fashioned by their parents, was fashioned by all sorts of things, their culture, their environment, etc. I think that can be true while also acknowledging that yes, I am a being who is different, who is distinct, and I need to live my life knowing that because I am the one who ultimately has to account for my own life on my deathbed. I want to feel like I lived life in honor of what was true for me, rather than what was expected of me. And also, that can be true while acknowledging that I am who I am because of you being who you are, and anyone else being who they are.
Hannah: It's the journey from The Lovers to the Chariot. The idea of how we move from the relational self to the individual self.
Gabriela: Totally. And The Lovers coming after the Hierophant, which speaks to the enfleshment of sacred truth — that’s what “hierophany” means, the embodiment of that which is ultimately true. Having a private remembrance of what is deeply true, so that I am rooted in that, and anchored in that deep, deep truth (however one ends up defining deep truth for themselves). That anchoring allows us to be in relationship in a way that is rooted and healthy — not some kind of modern capitalist understanding of being “in community” where I simply get to do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want, “because I'm a free person.” I think this time is all about relearning what the self is and what the collective is.
When I talk about self-fidelity, it is fidelity to myself, in the sense that I am an enfleshment of a deep mystery that connects all things. I understand myself both as a distinct being in the material world and also a being that is inherently connected to everything else that has ever been created.
When I talk about self-fidelity, it is fidelity to myself, in the sense that I am an enfleshment of a deep mystery that connects all things. I understand myself both as a distinct being in the material world and also a being that is inherently connected to everything else that has ever been created.
Self-fidelity encompasses fidelity to the collective. Because when I can be in a deep relationship with all the myriad parts of my inner universe, the more I can be loyal to the parts of me that are all contradictory, and the more I'm able to hold space outside of myself for how collectives are messy. I can say, “I don’t agree with you, and I thank you for being in my life.” Not from a place where I’m opening myself to being eviscerated by anything, anyone, any opinion, but to recollect that everyone holds within themselves in an entire universe, just like I do. And the more I can become friends with the many parts of that inner universe within myself, the more I can acknowledge that other people have an entire universe within themselves, too, and that each community is complex and has an entire universe within itself. And I can hold it all better because I’ve been practicing that within myself.
So when I speak of self-fidelity, I mean it in a way that is way more expansive than modern, conventional notions of self and fidelity. Because those are way too limited, as we normally speak about them.
Hannah: We’re redefining so much right now, and needing to clarify and find language when language is limiting. It can be frustrating. That feeling of needing to re-root, and re-ground, and re-define, so that we’re coming into conversation and into community and into relationship with deeper understanding — it’s really important. So I appreciate your definition and the experiences that brought you to it.
Gabriela: Thanks for inviting the conversation. I actually wrote a blessing for self-fidelity that's based on the Chariot, because when I’m engaging with tarot cards I often write prayers or blessings related to what the cards stir in me.
The Chariot — A Blessing for Self-Fidelity
by Gabriela De Golia
May you honor the journey that is yours alone to build and to pursue. May you walk your path in the company of true kin.
May you be granted fortitude to leave behind what serves you not. May you be gifted enough folly to fully love what fully enlivens you.
May you remain loyal to the holy that lives within you. May you forsake the false masters who rely on self-betrayal.
May the polarities within you be united in co-creative partnership. May this illuminate the complementary nature of your contradictions.
May you be tethered to the heartsong that drew you out of reality’s depths. May your actions be forever attuned to that irrevocable rhythm.
May the vessel of your being be forever blessed. May it faithfully carry you across the vast oceans that dwell within and beyond you.
May the manner in which you traverse the terrain of your life sanctify every realm, everywhere, everywhen.
May it be so. And so it is.
May it be so. And so it is.
May it be so. And so it is.
This was such a beautiful, thoughtful interview! Thank you for introducing me to Gabriela's work.