Defying Gravity

Reishi

Ganoderma lucidum

The artwork for the Reishi card, featuring a tree trunk with mushrooms growing up it in the shape of a spiral staircase, with a caterpillar crawling up the mushrooms.

Reishi mushroom is the Yoda of the plant world, helping you assimilate life’s experiences and turn them into wisdom. The Taoists teach that Reishi can show you where your power lies, which some might call your destiny. Reishi’s not some soft, clingy mushroom but instead a strong, structured, gravity-defying shelf. She asks no less from you: how can you defy anything keeping you from finding meaning, purpose, and health? Like all the best teachers, Reishi points to the path and lets you walk it, taking your lumps and bumps along the way. She doesn’t want you to rely on her strength; she wants you to find your own. But if you’re willing to do the work, Reishi will help you transform from the inside out.

Decorative artwork. Ritual Decorative artwork.

Write and Burn

To find your path and step into your own power, you need to release whatever is no longer serving your highest good. If your home or work space is full of stuff, call on Reishi energy and move along what you no longer need. Clutter, whether material or emotional, blocks you from stepping into your true work. If stale thoughts or ways of being need to be released, try this:

An illustration of reishi mushrooms.

Decorative artwork. Reflection Decorative artwork.

Step into Your Superpower

Do you know where your power lies? What gives you strength and vitality?

Oftentimes we think our superpower is the thing that makes those around us happy or comfortable. But Reishi knows that your gift, your strength, is the thing that makes you vital and alive.

To be clear: Reishi doesn’t care how you make your money. Your destiny may have nothing to do with how you pay your mortgage, but it has everything to do with how you feed your soul.

“We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be.”

Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior