Banana Bread and Heartbreak
When food becomes the oracle with Danielle Mainas.
The strength card in our deck is the soufflé. The original card on the Smith Rider Waite that Pamela Coleman Smith created is this gorgeous person in a garden. It's a femme holding a lion's mouth open by its jaws. And you see the word strength and you see this image and you think, okay, they're very physically strong. But the real message is that one of the things Leo can do at its best is be undeniably attracted from the heart to something. The heart wants what the heart wants. And the expression of Leo is about the honesty around what the heart wants, and then the ability to go after it with soft power. We don't charge at this animal.
This person wanted a relationship with this beast. There was trust, physical entanglement, surrender. She wanted this beast to be safe to surrender with. And so she had to approach with an open heart, slowly and consistently, until that beast said, okay, have at it. So it's about being a dreamer. Wanting something. And I think the Leo and the stage, sometimes that's where it leads us, into that place where other people can see it. It's on a stage, it's kind of big, it's kind of loud. And then the Leo can go, oh wait, I'm on stage. But I think we're on stage to have a soft heart so that others get to see what that looks like, what that can feel like. That's really the ultimate journey of that Leo work. When you're in the performance, to realize what the performance is for. It's not for you being great. It's for you being soft and everyone else getting to see. That's an absolutely accessible path to everyone.
And to land in that, that strength isn't brute force. It's about power from within.
So we've already had quite a conversation here, coming in the back door, and you have developed this incredibly unique tarot deck where the art, the focus, is food. Help me with the pronunciation.
Cacio e Pepe. Cheese and pepper.
So your encapsulated version of it for people who aren't familiar with your deck, how did you get to a tarot deck with food as the imagery?
My two loves. I made it with two other people, Megan Morris and Lindsay Newton. We would get together, and these were the women I felt safe to do what had been an inside job for me for a long time, which was tarot, astrology. Things I didn't really show much of for a host of reasons. But with these women we would make great food. Megan is a fabulous entertainer. We would be eating this gorgeous roast chicken off her heath plates and having this lovely time, and then we would make altars and pull cards and really go there, all day and all night.
We all had a food background as well. I used to be a cook in back of house. Megan is a nutritionist by training. And Lindsay adores food. She was CFO with Off The Grid in San Francisco, a Google subsidiary that does all the food trucks, so she was getting to go to all these fun food parties. She came back from one of these food parties and sent a text: you would not believe the cheese plate at this particular party, the Manchego had so much attitude. And we were just laughing like, somebody needs to make a deck about food. And I wrote back that I don't have the bandwidth.
But like all things, a spreadsheet was started. This was 2018 or 2019. Voice notes had just begun, and this idea kind of ran through the pastor of our shared hive mind. We were like, okay, let's just talk about it. They didn't have a tarot background in terms of the whole system, so I would explain what a card meant, and then we would just be top of mind, throw ideas out there. But eventually what started to happen was something more like channeling. I'd explain what the King of Wands was, leadership from a place of passion, really bringing out your inner leader, and Megan would say, well, it's blueberries. Or paella. And it was like, where are these ideas coming from? This is incredible. So it became something too fun and too interesting and too weird not to record, not to write down.
We went on a couple of trips to Sea Ranch, rented a house for three days, took all the art off the walls and put post-its up everywhere. There were some psychedelics involved, a lot of eating, walking the dog, napping. They're both like hysterical professional comedians essentially, just the funniest women.
And she came back and had written a lot of the cards, done the write-ups, and we all worked together on the back and forth of that. We thought we'd hire an artist to do the art, and then I put together a couple of really rough mock-ups, which actually some of them were the final art. And we looked at each other and said, I think you've got to make them. Okay. I guess I'll make 78 unique pieces of art with no copyright infringement somehow. I had a three-month-old and my dad was dying. It was actually the perfect time to dive into an art project. And then we made it. We were picky about all our materials, we really wanted it to be super fancy. And then we just put it a little bit out into the world and here it is. That's the story as short as I can make it.
So the initial inspirations, did those stay through all of the iterations?
Most of them did. Some we changed. And then we also included this section in the book. Every page has its write-up, the art, and then a little one-liner that gives you the balsamic nature of the thing. And then we included something called Works Cited at the very bottom in tiny italicized text. The concept was like a white paper, Works Cited at the bottom. We wanted to include things that also related to the card but weren't exactly the card. So the three of swords is banana bread. The whole write-up is about banana bread, how it sprang to America's kitchens during the Great Depression and how it's what you want to eat when you're crying at the same time.
Wait. I pulled a card for us today and I pulled the three of swords. And I can't just stop there.
That's why this is just so fun. When there's synchronicity, I'm a cheap date for it. Show me any synchronicity and I'm not leaving. The deck I have here, the Wild Unknown, Kim Kranz's deck, the three of swords is about heartbreak and betrayal. And when I pulled this I was like, oh shit. What. Why. What.
Yeah. So tell me about banana bread.
The broken part of your heart still beats. Find it. That's the one-liner. And it makes me emotional every time.
When this card comes up, we don't think it means that some type of betrayal or heartbreak is incoming. This card tends to come up actually when we're doing pretty well, cruising right along, and we may be in such a state of autopilot that we might not be catching ways that we're acting or behaving that come from a place in us that's wounded and hasn't quite been addressed all the way. The support the card offers isn't about going back in and having some low-vibe pity party. It's about being honest with yourself. Yeah, I've got this wound. It's my greatest teacher. It is a blessing. Am I acting in my life like I just got wounded here? Because if I am, I may want to neutralize that or release that a little bit. Am I acting from a place of scarcity or fear or heartbreak where that scarcity, fear, and heartbreak doesn't really have a place in my current present life right now?
And if I'm doing that, let me just acknowledge it. Because a big part of this card is that when we fully see something, often that's all we need to do for it to go back to the great library. I looked at it. I don't need to make it right. I don't need to explain it away. I don't even need to let it go. I can just forgive myself for how I've been with it and see if that's enough to let it stop driving the car.
That's what this card is about. And the reason it's banana bread is that it's the fruit on the counter that we use when it's rotting. It's the thing you go to when you need to cry and chew at the same time. We all know that feeling of chewing something and really crying at the same time, which is like a real human privilege to get to do. So it's about bringing comfort and safety, producing something out of what's languishing.
A lot of this, the reason it's food, is we wanted to remind people that they already know what these things are. The reason it's banana bread may not make all the sense to you immediately but it may somehow tie in. And then of course the Works Cited, the number one most searched recipe during the pandemic, your first heartbreak, Dr. Schwartz's work on Internal Family Systems, What Happened to You by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry, the Indigo Girls version of Romeo and Juliet by Mark Knopfler, the three of swords from the Smith Rider Waite, and it's ruled by Saturn in Libra.
That's wild. And yes, what you said about people being able to relate to food. The Rider Waite deck, I never connected with the illustrations. Something about it just didn't draw me in. And when I saw you at the show, this little arts fair, you had life cards. Your numerology cards. The first nine cards of the major arcana as seen through Cacio e Pepe Tarot. And I drew yogurt.
Which is the mother. The Empress. Yeah, it's you.
And that has been the three of swords for me. What I also drew was the seven of wands. And it is about this story around mother and letting others' opinions, judgment, everything fall away around that.
The seven of wands is so instructive. Both of those cards really don't pull punches. And yogurt as the Empress, she's number three, is so expansive it can be really hard for her to soften and really let in all the love. She's supposed to be the great mother but it's also about receiving, because it's the feminine principle. It's about the cave that can be entered. And it's quite terrifying. But first, of course, the wounds need to be addressed.
And the seven of wands, in our deck that's lobster. The lobster is protecting his little castle, coming out with his claws, feeling really defensive, feeling like all this work he's done needs to be protected, that someone's coming for it. So it's about the defenses we've built around us.
The idea of lobster is that we're dropping our hypervigilance and really trusting that everything that goes is not our treasure, it's not meant for us, and that everything that stays is our treasure and is meant for us. It's internal work about external situations. And it's tough. And it's also so loving. The sevens are all just like, there's enough. There's enough for everyone.
Tell me about the lobster in terms of how it relates to the seven of wands.
This lobster is protecting his little castle, coming out with his claws, feeling really defensive, feeling like all this work he's done needs to be protected, that someone's coming for it. So it's all about the defenses we've built up around us. One of the things I love about this particular write-up is, it takes gut fire and hypervigilance to survive. And we all want a seat at the table where we get to order lobster. But at what cost? The world around us can be ruthless. There's no denying this eat-or-be-eaten reality. So we build stone walls for protection, survival, and to win. But then it is within these walls that we have to live out our existence. So it's about what defenses are we willing to let go.
One of my favorite Works Cited for this one is the quote of the man in the arena, the Theodore Roosevelt quote that Brene Brown often cites. It's about the one in the arena really doing the work, having the blood and the sweat, being vulnerable and being seen and losing sometimes, not walking away victorious, but that showing up and doing the work is the most important thing. And the folks who have all their opinions about it, that has nothing to do with the one who's in the arena doing the work.
The hard shell protecting the sweet meat inside.
Exactly. The writing on these is so brilliant and insightful.
Thank you. Megan is really good with words, another Gemini. She hadn't written anything historically but we joke with her all the time now, hashtag writer for a living. We would go back and forth on the writing to her vast annoyance I'm sure. But the brilliant writing was there and then we together really shared our philosophies and beliefs to tweak it to the right place.
We also didn't want it to be predictive in any way. Because that can take away one's sense of what is always there no matter what, which is free will. It doesn't matter if you want to use it or not, you still have it every single moment of the day. So we didn't want to in any way overshadow that.
It's written in a way that calls attention to a part of the human experience instead of saying, if you pulled this card you may be experiencing this. Because that can also damage someone's relationship with their guides. What if you don't feel like that's what's going on? And then you're like, this thing doesn't work, I suck at this, I'm not supposed to be doing this. We really wanted to make sure that anyone could, at any point in time, still go, okay. And then almost always within the next 24 hours you're like, oh. Oh. If you don't get it right away, you're going to get it.
So we wanted to leave space for that to happen. Not so that people felt like oh this deck is so great. But so they felt like, God, I am so loved by something that wants to tell me about myself. Maybe I do have something looking out for me. Maybe it's just the other 90% of my brain they say I don't use. But maybe there's something unseen here that wants to see me do well in my life.
That's really the underlying goal. It's accessible to everyone because everyone knows what food is. My dear friend and teacher said to me, I don't have a relationship with swords, but I have a relationship with soup and I know what it's about. And I don't know anything about what the page of cups is, but I sure as hell know what ants on a log is. And I get it. It's meant to let everyone in, including someone who's like, tarot is the devil's portal. It's like, this is lasagna. We can all agree lasagna is about generosity and reciprocity. Calm down. No one's getting hurt. There's no demons here. This is really a language we already all know.
I have collected various decks all through my life. And for so long I was longing for a predictive thing. Give me the answers. And the decks I've stayed with over the years are the ones that do exactly what you're talking about. They help you align with the truth of what you know internally without giving you an answer.
Totally. And then the heavy-hitter cards like the three of swords and the seven of wands, we can start to place them in a timeline if we're talking about movement. Some of the cards are like, you can't pass go or collect $200 until this. So we can start to recognize them as lily pads on our journey. If we're like, okay, where am I going now, it's like, well, but this is right now. And the brain can go, okay, it's this pad, it's this now, on my way to something. Because we do want to know we're on our way somewhere. That's natural. That's part of our survival.
And the best decks really allow you to recognize that this present moment is a part of that journey, but right now it's this, so that you can move. Spirit doesn't think about time the same way we do. Folks will say, okay, so this is like the next month? And it's like, girl, this could be something that happened three years ago and there's just some residue that you need to see. Or it can be done in five minutes. Or it can be three weeks from now and you'll be like, that's what it was about.
The three of swords in the Wild Unknown, three swords crossing over each other, wrapped in a bloody ribbon, very dark foreboding background. I know it as heartbreak and betrayal. And when I pulled it I was like, oh shit. And it's a matter of where we place it in terms of meaning relative to what's going on in our lives. This wasn't about recording this episode, it wasn't about any of those things. And yet what I get from this in talking to you now is that this has been an underlying theme that I get to acknowledge and accept and release. And the card I drew under that was the two of pentacles. I get to have both, this heartbreak and this lobster who is hard on the outside and sweet meat on the inside, and understand that that shell was hard-earned. I get to be both.
Yeah. There's never going to be a card that doesn't apply to us. And the stability of the two of pentacles, I love what Kim Kranz drew with that butterfly. It's a black and white butterfly with a lemniscate, a figure eight, connecting the two pentacles in a rainbow hue. It's such a beautiful image.
The two of pentacles and the strength card and the magician are the three cards in the tarot that traditionally have the infinity sign in them. I believe it must go back to some Kabbalist root. It's related to Saturn, which is really interesting. It has to do with transformation in the tarot, so whenever we see those three cards, whatever work we're doing in them, we are transforming. We will be different at the end of it.
In our deck the two of pentacles is rice. It's ruled by Jupiter in Capricorn, which carries the Saturn relationship. And it's about increasing in some generative way our ability to learn the lessons of being a human being in a human body and how time really works on us here in the third dimension. In earth school, if we're very lucky we've got two hands and two feet and we can only affect change as far as we can reach. A potentially six-foot radius.
One of my favorite versions of that card is from the Mother Peace deck by Vicki Noble and Karen Vogel. A woman is breastfeeding two twins. And it's just so clear. I only have two of these. My arms are full. This is literally all I can do. So it's a card about honestly sinking into our human priorities. What is here on earth. We can only hold what we can hold. It's enough. It doesn't need to be everything. And that in that simple thing is the transformation. I love that the figure eight shows up on that card because it's like, we've got our hands full. What does it take to just be stable in this moment? And when we can really sink into that, we can magnify what it is to just be human in that moment.
There was one other card. I usually draw this in the past position and it's the four of cups, which I understand as betrayal or denial?
It can be any uncomfortable feeling. Whatever it is, we have enough of it and we need a break. The fours are always about creating a box, some sort of structure. And almost always we need to go in the box and make a little bit of boundary about everything around us. The fours being about emotions, it often means there's enough emotional material. It could literally not even be ours. It could be something our parent is going through, or our child, or our friend. Or things people in the world are experiencing that we're seeing. And it's just like, this is enough right now. I don't need to be taking on anymore. There's something here that needs to be digested and processed.
So I take this card to mean we get the call. And the call is from someone who maybe wants to do some emotional processing with us. And this is one of those cards that says, maybe sit with what you've got. You need a little time to let the emotions settle. There's enough. If we add one more drop, it's all going to spill over.
In our deck this is breakfast for dinner. Getting an invitation, and sometimes it's not even an invitation to something uncomfortable. It's an invitation to something delicious. You love your argument. You're right, obviously. And this card is like, maybe you're not going out to the restaurant even though you have your whole outfit picked out and your argument and your statements all ready. Maybe you just need to stay home and make eggs and toast. You've got enough. You don't need more. It's about letting time and letting boundaries do the work of containing you so that you can see it from another perspective. Like tomorrow.
How in the world did you come to this? Were you raised with this kind of stuff?
Thank you for asking that because it gets me to talk about how grateful I am for my parents. Not that it's always been easy and not that it is easy. But I'm just so grateful for my life and to be born from them. They offered a lot of access to magical things. There were always texts and books and meditation things and all kinds of stuff around this really cool old barn I lived in as a little one. They believed in mysticism but we didn't talk about it. We were playing the capitalism game. But they were always open. I could investigate anything. We didn't ever talk about astrology but all the Linda Goodman books were in the house. I'm so grateful for that. And I've just always been that way. I wanted incense holders, crystals, anything I could get my hands on from a young age. I found astrology incredibly instructive. Tarot was hard to sink into at first.
And then I got really lucky when I was nineteen. I worked with this woman at Aveda in the mall. She was much older than me and a Brazilian witch, so cool, so fun, so amazing. Katya is her name. And she gifted me my first tarot deck, which felt incredibly special because I was this teenager at a mall job and she was this real cool woman. She said, this is for you.
If a Brazilian witch gives you a tarot deck, you are like, I have been chosen. She also gave me, as an anchor, the Orisha Yemoya, the Brazilian mermaid, the mother. She said, this is also for you. Which was important to me because in our deck we really want to stay in our lineage and make sure that if we practice anything outside of our lineage we understand how to do that in a good way. So it felt like she gave me a little license to work with that particular figure, Yemoya, along with the tarot deck. And I was just like, we're off to the races. My brain just liked learning every single thing about it.
I was raised in Ohio, went to Catholic school all the way through. So this was all verboten. Do you think of yourself as a California person now?
Yes. Here since 2000. We raised our daughter here. I can't imagine living anywhere else. I love being here. It's letting all the old fall away and standing in my truth.
Can I ask you, can you tell me more about your knowing around creating this podcast, what you are exploring and unfolding and doing here, and how are we getting to talk?
The title FierceGRAVITAS came for me as this reclamation. People would often reflect to me, I experience you as just having such gravitas. And I'm like, what, who are you talking about? And primal has always been an archetype for me that, while I know I'm still not yet fully living it, it is within me. That's the fierceness. And using my voice, specifically in claiming that, is what I felt called to do in creating this podcast. The range of topics, I have been open completely to inspiration and where I've been led, in terms of connection with people, with topics, with what feels most aligned in terms of claiming all of that within you.
And you and your partners in this deck, you are so freaking the embodiment of all of that. The fierceness with which you absolutely stand behind what you've created. This isn't about making pretty pictures. It wasn't about writing a book. It wasn't about being cute with food. Yes, there was fun and creativity and play in the making of this. But this is true and fierce in what you've made here.
Thank you so much for seeing that. Because when you walked by, you weren't even at our table, you were down the hall. I was like, Megan, look. Look at this one. And she was like, oh yeah. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what that is. And it was you. The mirror. That obvious mirror that's sometimes there. Because of the prayer that we both have for performance to not be the point of it, but to still be recognizable. So that I recognize my relation when I see her. And I'm like, oh, there she is. It's not because of what she wore. It has nothing to do with how gorgeous she is. It's just so obvious. And it's like, oh great. Well, let's obviously talk and record it.
Danielle, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Delphine.
