with Nancy Hendrickson

Andrew and Nancy have spent a long time working with ancestors and the tarot. In this conversation they share their journeys and perspectives on working with those on the other side. Discussing how ancestral stories shape our identities, the importance of connecting with ancestors for guidance, and the possible role of DNA in understanding our heritage. We also talk about how to handle the hard ancestors and trauma that can often be in our lineages.

There are a lot of practical tips on things like making an altar, working with taropt and pendulums and reflection through journaling. This is a chance to listen to two new friends get to share their stories and practices in a very personal and engaged way.

Listen to the episode on all the platforms. Or use the player below.

You can download the audio here.

You can find us on the socials. Or Nancy is here and Andrew is here.

Episodes with drop biweekly going forward. Help me let the world know I’m back by sharing on socials and leaving review on the platform on which you listen to us.

Much love

Andrew

PS Nancy’s favourite late cretaceous animal is the Quetzalcoatlus.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ancestral Work and Tarot
03:01 The Intersection of Tarot and Ancestry
06:00 Connecting with Ancestors for Guidance
08:56 Surviving Historical Challenges: Lessons from Ancestors
11:59 The Role of DNA in Understanding Ancestry
14:56 Navigating Family Trauma and Difficult Ancestors
18:06 Creating Ancestral Altars and Rituals
21:03 Personal Stories and Reflections on Ancestry
30:59 Connecting with Ancestors and Energy
34:43 The Importance of Slowing Down
37:18 Navigating Social Media and Community Engagement
39:04 Teaching and Sharing Tarot Practices
41:01 Journaling and Self-Reflection
46:06 Working with Ancestors in Tarot
52:14 Healing Through Service and Writing
56:33 Exploring the Unexplainable

Transcript

Andrew McGregor (00:00)
Hey folks, I am back today with another episode of the podcast. Today I have Nancy Hendrickson on. I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy in person last year at the Kingston, Tarot and Lenormand Conference. And to be honest, she’s just a delight. Nancy is really known for a lot of her work with ancestors, which as folks know is an area that I’m very excited about.

She’s written a couple of great books and done a bunch of other work bringing that sort of world of tarot and card reading and ancestral work together. But you know for folks who might not know you Nancy, why don’t you let us know who you are.

Nancy Hendrickson (00:44)
wow. And Andrew, it was great to meet you in person in Kingston. I so enjoyed it. And, you know, I’ve seen your name around a lot, but I never knew. And I know that you and Carrie had a, Carrie Paris had a connection. So anyway, it was nice to meet you in person. What do you need to know about me? my God. Well, as you saw in Kingston, I am incredibly dedicated to my craft of both tarot and ancestral work.

And I’ve been doing ancestral research since I was about eight years old. And in fact, several of my books pre-ancestral tarot were genealogy books that I wrote on, you know, where to find ancestor stuff if you’ve never gotten started in it. Because I, you know, there’s, I was, I think I was actually just born to do this work.

whether it’s on the genealogy side or the tarot side.

Andrew McGregor (01:48)
And did it start out with a metaphysical overlaying for you or did it start out more practically?

Nancy Hendrickson (01:54)
know,

yeah, ancestral tarot, which I think came out in 2020 or 2021, it was the culmination of a lifetime of genealogy and 40 plus years of tarot. And I had always gone through life kind of keeping them in separate bins. And I thought, you know, I’m really tired of this because I use them together. So.

Now my next book, I’m gonna write about them together. And I’m really glad I did because it was at that time groundbreaking. I know other books on the topic have come out, but using tarot as a way to make a direct connection with an ancestor was something I’ve always done since my 20s. And since this is audio only and you can’t see me, I’m way past my 20s. So…

And again, as I said, I’ve been reading Tarot for 40 years and I just overlaid it with genealogy. It’s a perfect marriage.

Andrew McGregor (03:01)
Yeah, well, and I really love that your approach includes that sense of a full spectrum of ancestry, you know, my own personal practice, which has been much more just spirit driven, you know, tends to focus on a particular person or a few particular people. And for me, if people aren’t standing up and saying hello,

I’m not really engaging with them too much other than the most general sense like prayers and such to my ancestors. Whereas the work that I’ve seen of yours really sort of pays attention to that whole picture which I think is really wonderful.

Nancy Hendrickson (03:41)
It does, and probably, you know, both of my grandmothers.

I grew up with both my grandmothers telling me stories about their grandfathers. So that took me way back into 19th century history, which isn’t that far back in terms of mankind, but they both told such engaging stories. I always wanted to know more.

And when I started doing the math, I realized that over, you know, a 500 year period of time, we have close to a million direct ancestors and those figures will change because a lot of times cousins, married cousins, so it kind of messes up the math. But I came through my own work to realize we have like a celestial cheering squad who for the most part,

Andrew McGregor (04:38)
Hmm.

Nancy Hendrickson (04:40)
want us to be happy. And I think we humans are so great at making ourselves unhappy. for me, the ancestors are always a reminder of, hey, you’re alive. You live in a beautiful place. Life is good. Be happy. Stop making up things that are problems because, you know, I know ancestors who out of 13 kids lost 10 of them.

their lives were incredibly difficult. And so I think that’s why they’re always jabbing, know, come on, come on, you got it all, be happy.

Andrew McGregor (05:18)
Kimma. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, and think that it’s one of the places where I often send people first, because there are almost always ancestors who are close ancestors who are invested, you know, and we can go knock on the door of the Archangel Michael or whomever else. But maybe they care. Maybe they don’t care in a particular sense.

Nancy Hendrickson (05:34)
Yes.

See

ya.

Andrew McGregor (05:45)
Whereas those ancestors that are there really do have that vested interest in sort of seeing everything continue in a good way and helping that family line continue in positive ways.

Nancy Hendrickson (06:00)
I think that’s absolutely true. you know, a lot of people didn’t know many generations back. You know, I can get back to like a great aunt, but beyond that, they were gone before I was ever born. But I look at even my own great aunt and, you know, she had five or six kids, three or four of them died in a combination of World War II, car accidents, her husband.

Andrew McGregor (06:17)
Mm-hmm.

Nancy Hendrickson (06:30)
shot himself out hunting. And yet my only memory of her is laughter. She found a way to find laughter and joy in this incredibly tragic life. And so I was lucky that those were really role models for me.

Andrew McGregor (06:48)
Yeah. Well, and I remember when COVID came around and the lockdowns started. And one of the things that I started talking a lot about with folks at that time was, I guarantee you have ancestors who’ve lived through something. You know, let’s, let’s talk to them. Let’s reach out to them, ask for those ancestors who survived these, these hard situations and let’s get them to support us and

Nancy Hendrickson (06:55)
Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (07:18)
inspire us and guide us and help us do the best which is during such a you know such a colossally challenging time and you know it’s been back on my mind as the American political situation has really shifted over the last while and I’m like you know I’m sure you have ancestors who have lived through very very hard times being persecuted and afraid of the politics and all of those things and

Let’s connect with them and let’s get them to lean in for us and help us and support us and keep us safe and maybe advise us on things as well.

Nancy Hendrickson (07:57)
That’s really true. And Andrew, just because the difference in my age and your age, my guess is your grandfather might have been born during the 1918 pandemic, sometime in that era, just because my dad was born in 1918. So you probably have a generation further back from me.

Andrew McGregor (08:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Nancy Hendrickson (08:24)
And I actually wrote an article about, I read cards tapping in with an ancestor who I knew did live through the 1918 pandemic. And it’s inspiring. They survived. So my opinion is if you did it, man, I can do it too.

Andrew McGregor (08:38)
Hmm.

sure yeah so when you when you checked in with him about that tell me tell me what that was like for you

Nancy Hendrickson (08:56)
was really interesting because it was this great aunt and my grandmother, so they were sisters. And I ask, how did you physically survive? Because I know from articles I’ve read in the National Archives, during 1918, public gatherings stopped, movie theaters stopped, even going to church stopped.

and my grandmother lived on a farm. So I then asked her and her sister, how did you guys do that? And through the cards and the pendulum, because they use the pendulum a lot, they basically said that they didn’t go to a store very often because it was too dangerous. They traded with other farms for things they needed.

and their needs were pretty simple because they grew their own gardens and crops anyway. Yeah, so mean they stayed, at least the ones I talked to, they stayed probably as isolated as we all did.

Andrew McGregor (09:58)
for sure.

Nancy Hendrickson (10:10)
within their family group.

Andrew McGregor (10:12)
And they didn’t even have Netflix to keep them busy.

Nancy Hendrickson (10:14)
They

didn’t have Netflix. I mean, during COVID, you I walked every morning and at least I could be outdoors.

I don’t know if they did in Canada, but they had senior hour at the grocery store. So, know, we’re all, you know, we are imaginative humans. We find ways to survive.

Andrew McGregor (10:33)
Yep, we had that too, for sure. Yep.

Nancy Hendrickson (10:45)
And did you do that? I mean, did you still do orders through your store?

Andrew McGregor (10:51)
Yeah, we did online orders. spent a lot of time cycling. You know, and with a few friends, we would go and cycle and, you we’d be outside and moving. So it was relatively safe. And, you know, we’d go. We, we went, we did lot of cycling in the night, like in the evening after you know, whatever, and just had little headlights on our bikes and rode through the parks and saw the wildlife coming out, you know, and

Nancy Hendrickson (10:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (11:19)
I was very, very lucky in that I had a private studio space that I still had access to. So I had a space outside of the house and me and the kids put up a little climbing wall and we would go and make art and listen to records and climb and be goofy and, you know, not, not be stuck in the small, same small limited space, which was a real, you know, a real benefit for sure. You know, having that option and being able to sort of

Nancy Hendrickson (11:36)
Okay.

Andrew McGregor (11:48)
Be like, okay, you want the house? Fine, you have the apartment. We’re gonna go, you know, go to the studio. Okay, you wanna come to the studio? Great, you know, like, just having those options is a real blessing for sure.

Nancy Hendrickson (11:59)
Yeah, and for me, it’s knowing that I had family. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have family who lived in 1918. I mean, it would be an impossibility. So, you know, for me, that gives me lot of strength. You know, when I wrote Ancestral Tarot, I think I said at the end, if I didn’t, meant to, is no matter how much you know about your family in the end, you end up knowing who you are.

Andrew McGregor (12:07)
for sure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (12:29)
because you have a bedrock of people who were strong, whose DNA runs through you. And I think one of these days, and I might’ve said this to you in Kingston, I don’t remember, but I think one of these days, we’re gonna find so much more about our abilities in DNA. I think it’s encoded. We just haven’t figured out how to find it. And I think we’re gonna find our strengths.

the things we do incredibly well. I could go on about DNA, but I’m going to stop because, well, because of the writing I did, I’ve taken DNA from about five different companies. So I’ve learned so much more about my own history.

Andrew McGregor (13:20)
This is your own DNA. Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (13:22)
This is my DNA

and it’s my brother and sister. We’ve all done so we can look at each other’s and aren’t all of ours are different. Because you don’t. DNA doesn’t come down in a nice straight line site. My brother is. 47 % Scottish, I’m 10 % so my sister is almost none, so it’s quite interesting to see.

And then that’s my point. I know we’re getting way off target here, OK, so thinking about this, why did my brother Mark end up with 47 % Scottish? He is at his happiest in Scotland. He I mean he he called me one day and he said I love that place. I mean he’s still in love with it. I loved it too, but not as much as he did.

Andrew McGregor (13:54)
We’re not at all. This is fascinating.

Nancy Hendrickson (14:19)
So, you know, we get includes by those little bits of DNA in our reports about what’s important.

Andrew McGregor (14:28)
Yeah, I haven’t, I haven’t done any of those tests. I should, I should play around with that and see what comes up. know, it’s pretty Scottish. I mean, you know, in, in living memory, it’s all it’s mostly Scottish and English. however, my, great grandmother. So my, my, my maternal line grandmother, something interesting came out.

Nancy Hendrickson (14:33)
Well, McGregor’s pretty Scottish.

Right.

Andrew McGregor (14:56)
after after she passed and my mom was going through all the records and what happened was her husband had gone off to fight in the war you know my grandmother was born in 1920 and so you know my my great grandmother’s husband my great grandfather well actually not my great grandfather he had gone off to fight in the war he didn’t die but he never came home he just abandoned his life right and

Nancy Hendrickson (15:22)
So this was it.

Andrew McGregor (15:25)
went and did whatever he was doing wherever he was in sort of mainland Europe as opposed to back in London, right? And however it happened, and you know, this is something that’s on my list to spend some time with the cards and talking to my ancestors about my great grandmother went to Italy and she met a man there and he was the father of my grandmother. They weren’t married. He

as far as I understand he did not come back to England with her and eventually she returned to England with my you know with my grandmother right so there’s this interesting little slice of one-eighth Italian that that exists in you know in me and you know and the family back a few generations there was this sort of surprise right and I remember the day that my mom kind of put it together and like told me and my brother I get this

Nancy Hendrickson (16:02)
Well…

Andrew McGregor (16:23)
this phone call from him and he’s like, hey, Johnny Capacola, it all makes sense now. Makes sense. Why do we live in Little Italy? Why do we love these coffees so much? know, because we lived in the Italian neighborhood and you know, and stuff like that. He’s like, it makes so much sense. I’m like, it’s hilarious, you know, so.

Nancy Hendrickson (16:40)
So did anybody, did husband or partner number one ever show up? Did people know where he was?

Andrew McGregor (16:49)
I don’t know what the story was. Nobody talked about it, right? It’s all very British, right? You know, and, and I think too, you know, like, it’s interesting to me that you, you know, got to know your great grandmother or some, right? Because for me, even my grandparents generation was full of so much trauma and alcoholism and other things, you know, I never met my mom’s dad because he had disowned her.

Nancy Hendrickson (16:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (17:17)
I did meet my grandfather on my dad’s side, but it was very limited and very public because he was a raging alcoholic. And, you know, and so like, there’s a lot of disruption there, you know, that, that happens immediately and, and really kind of cut off a lot of those sort of other stories. And even my grandmother,

My grandmother who bought me my first tarot deck when I was 13, right? I was at the mall with her and I was like, Hey Nan, will you get that for me? And she was like, of course I will. You know, even though she knew I was into all these things, she never told me she read tea leaves. It just never came up, right? There was this, you know, it was the, the, the unspoken thing she did with the ladies when they came over for tea sometimes, you know? And, you know, so it’s fascinating these things that come out, you know,

Nancy Hendrickson (18:06)
Interesting.

Families, you know, my grandparents went to seances and I have the, I wish I should have them out, but I don’t. They took two small chalkboards, put chalk in it, close them together and when they opened, there were messages. So I have the last messages on these chalkboards. But I didn’t know this until I was well into my 30s.

Andrew McGregor (18:30)
Amazing.

wow.

Nancy Hendrickson (18:40)
that it was like a secret. was like…

Andrew McGregor (18:45)
Alright.

Nancy Hendrickson (18:45)
You

know, was, and I mean, seriously silly, but also like my mom, my mother did not know who her father was until she was 90 and we found him through DNA. And it was just this guy who had like 15 or 16 kids and…

Andrew McGregor (19:00)
Wow.

Who’s a man on the move? Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (19:11)
He was a man on the move.

And once she knew who it was, it’s like, okay, I found out who you are. don’t care anymore. yeah.

Andrew McGregor (19:23)
Hmm, interesting. Yeah.

Well, I think it’s really interesting. Like, what do we do with this information? Right? Because, you know, I mean, I don’t have particularly negative, like personally, any negative associations with, you know, any of my ancestors in relationship to me. But the stories that I’ve heard from my parents about their parents are super garbage, you know, and, know, what, what, what do you

do with those difficult folks? Like, is that a thing that you run into?

Nancy Hendrickson (19:54)
You know what?

My grandmother was married and this is her first husband. So she already had had my mother by this guy and then she had three kids with her husband. And one day he just walked out the door and there she was with four kids to support. Do I want to connect with this guy in spirit? No.

I could care less. And his parents knew where he was, but they would never tell my grandmother. Do I want to connect with them? No. And, know, I tell people, don’t have to connect with people that you know did things that you just can’t live with. And, you know, I know some people will say you really should work with them for healing. And maybe I’m just not that big of a

of a forgiver, knowing how cruel that was to walk out on some woman with four little kids. So, you know, I…

Andrew McGregor (20:53)
Yeah.

And

I’m sure at that point in history to even more so right? Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (21:07)
totally.

I mean, totally. You know, life was hard enough for a single parent, throw four kids on top of it. And I’m sure my grandmother had a really hard life. The good thing on her story though was she didn’t like me. So she woked my sister. She didn’t really like me, but it wasn’t until I was writing the first book that I really

Andrew McGregor (21:29)
Okay.

Nancy Hendrickson (21:37)
I made peace with the fact she didn’t like me. And I think that’s kind of the best we can do. Let’s just make peace with ourselves about these people.

Andrew McGregor (21:48)
Hmm. Yeah. Well, and for me, because I have a very sort of magical, you know, approach to working with spirits and ancestors, I tend to with those folks who are difficult, I don’t, you know, in my house, I have an altar where I speak with the dead and make offerings and stuff like that. And in my religious tradition, working with Arisha, respecting the elders of my

Lineage as well as you know my ancestors by blood is you know is a really important part of it but if I’m actually gonna like Deal with anybody who’s more difficult. I go outside and do it. I do it out of my house You know go find a a nice tree stump and you know leave them something there or you know if they were religious, you know a lot of Catholics and one wing of my family. I’m just like perfect I’m just gonna have a mass said for you and let that

Nancy Hendrickson (22:34)
You

Andrew McGregor (22:47)
You know, let the church and God lift you up and, you know, I’m going to stay at home, you know.

Nancy Hendrickson (22:47)
Wow.

Andrew,

you are way more forgiving than I am. But I think there are some things that are unforgivable. I work more, I don’t work so much on healing them as I do me. And that’s what’s important to me. And I work with a lot of people age, I’d say 35 to 45.

Andrew McGregor (23:00)
100%.

Nancy Hendrickson (23:20)
And there’s so much family trauma. I don’t know if it’s that group or just those are the people who come to me. Maybe both.

Andrew McGregor (23:31)
The older generations just don’t talk.

Nancy Hendrickson (23:34)
Yeah, I suppose so. Well, and younger generations are willing to walk away from a toxic family. You know, I think they’re much more willing to walk away than my generation or your generation would have been. Maybe. That’s conjecture on my part. But I’m happy to see them. Why stay in a place where you’re being tortured by the toxicity in your family?

Andrew McGregor (24:06)
Yeah, I think it’s so good to build some kind of process, you know, walk away, engage, work on yourself, you know, whichever way, right? Because these things, whether they’re in our DNA or just inherited by the environment we grew up in and the inherited, you know, traumas and dramas and all those things, you know, I mean, it’s such a such an impactful set of forces in us.

if it’s on exam, right? You know?

Nancy Hendrickson (24:36)
That’s true.

It’s true, but you know, I don’t feel like we need to work through every single thing that we run up against. You know, I’m, I’m, I’m, I am more in the, what mountain am I willing to die on? And so if the, and this changes as you age, you know, the older I get, the less mountains I’m willing to die on. I really,

concentrate on the things that I think are really important, both for me personally and for politically, culturally. Those are the things that are important to me.

Andrew McGregor (25:15)
I mostly just want to be out in the woods listening to the river and the birds. That’s really where I want to be so much.

Nancy Hendrickson (25:18)
Thanks.

Yes, I told one of my friends I went a cabin in the woods that’s really close to a major medical center. I don’t think I’m going to find that.

Andrew McGregor (25:29)
for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I do think it’s really make trying to make that decision. Right? This is not a thing that I’m going to deal with. You know? I have one of one of my grandparents I remember the first time I was doing like a Mesa like a spiritual mass or a seance type thing right? For folks who know I do like white table, you know, Mesa’s and stuff like that, right? So Alan Kardek kind of things.

Nancy Hendrickson (25:41)
One.

Andrew McGregor (25:59)
And I remember my dad’s dad showed up and he behaved like an asshole. And I was like, you’re done, get out. That’s it. You know, and that was pushing 30 years ago. And every now and again, when I’m doing a bigger ritual for the whole family that includes like just, you know, honoring them or sending energy their way, I’ll name him, but other than that, he’s just out. I was like, no, I don’t got time for that.

you know and yeah he’ll sort it out next time he comes to earth

Nancy Hendrickson (26:29)
Yeah.

and we’ll you.

So you mentioned you had an altar, an ancestral altar.

What do you have on it? What do you have on it that you can say?

Andrew McGregor (26:48)
So.

So I have seven glasses of water. have pictures of my ancestors. I have items that belong to some of my ancestors. I have my Scottish grandparents, McGregor shield with the tartan and it’s got the little lion on it and all that stuff and hung. I remember seeing it in their house when I was there as a small child and I have my

Nancy Hendrickson (26:56)
Okay.

Okay.

Andrew McGregor (27:21)
my mom’s dad’s Bible and my grandmother’s Bible and other bits and pieces from ancestors. Yeah. And so when I’m there and working with that part of it, I tend to, you know, just say the Lord’s prayer because they were all Christian of one sort or another. And then just speak with them. And then when it comes to my religious practice,

Nancy Hendrickson (27:29)
Wow. Wow.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (27:51)
um we consecrate a stick to speak with them there’s ceremonies that we do to it and stuff like that to help us connect and honor the ancestors and the uh the stick that i consecrated is actually my grandmother who bought me a tarot deck it was her cane which is a very which i feel a very strong connection to you know and in that case then mostly what i offer there is you know

Nancy Hendrickson (28:11)
Okay.

I love that.

Andrew McGregor (28:21)
prayers in the morning, coffee, during holidays, during birthdays, during events, I’ll make sure the ancestors get some of the food that we’re making and so on as part of it as a general practice. And I’m actually in the process right now of, I felt that the ancestors wanted to be more prominent in my business life, in my work life.

Nancy Hendrickson (28:37)
Bye.

Andrew McGregor (28:50)
as a diviner and all that kind of stuff. And so I’ve been collecting photos and I’m gonna print pictures of sort of my religious lineage, my tarot lineage and my family lineage and hang them on the wall where I sit and read cards for folks and stuff like that.

Nancy Hendrickson (29:10)
I’ve been making cards. They’re about the size of a tarot card that I’ll do a collage and I’ve been mostly working on stuff in my parents generation and

Andrew McGregor (29:24)
Mm-hmm.

Nancy Hendrickson (29:29)
I’ll choose a tarot card background because I like that base. So like for my dad, I chose the moon and part of the collage is a letter he wrote home during World War II. Part of the collage is him and going out of the top of the card is him in high school on a motorcycle. So I wanted to show him taking off upwards.

because he passed away when he was 44. He was very young. And so I’m working on my mom’s right now and they’re on my altar, the cards I’ve been working on. you know, there’s something about what you said about creating the pictures, saving the pictures. There’s something there that I think is a touchstone to take a leap off to talk to them.

which I like too. My mom is around a lot. When we moved into this apartment, said, if you’re around, drop a coin on the floor. So on my desk, I have a collection of the coins that have been dropped in this apartment. And every once in a while, I’ll hear her say my name. So I know she’s definitely around.

Andrew McGregor (30:31)
you

Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Nancy Hendrickson (30:59)
But we talked about who do we tap in with. I’ve never had a sense of my dad ever. And I think it’s because when he died, it was so traumatic that when I see him in my mind’s eye, I see him asleep. And I just, don’t know when he’s going to wake up. Yeah, so.

I think the more you do this work, and I know that you probably have experienced the same thing, the more you do the work, the more sensitized you get to the energy around you relative to ancestors. It’s pretty amazing what you can hear if you just stop.

Andrew McGregor (31:36)
Hmm.

Yeah. I think that, I, I love that you, kind of made an agreement with your mom, right? Hey, when you, when you do this, I’m going to know, because I think that, I think it can be, it goes both ways, right? We can, we can think we’re getting nothing or we can think everything is, is a message. And, know, and I think that having

Nancy Hendrickson (31:57)
Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (32:16)
some sense of containment or clarity around what the message is. You know, I remember I was driving along, so two of my brothers have passed on, and my youngest brother, Ian, I was driving and he liked that Toto song, Africa, you know, and it got covered by another band a number of years back now, right? And I was driving along and that song comes on the radio and I was telling my partner,

Nancy Hendrickson (32:35)
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew McGregor (32:46)
about the song and I was like, oh yeah, he used to sing this all the time, right? And then as he walked by, somebody was wearing a sports jersey and we had a private joke name between us that I called him and that name was on the back of the hockey jersey or whatever. And I was like, I see you Ian, I see you, thanks man. But it’s not everywhere and it’s not all the time, right?

Nancy Hendrickson (33:02)
Yeah.

I don’t know, Andrew. I see signs almost every day that I know are messages. And I think it’s because, you know, I think we just don’t open ourselves up to being aware. I think we’re getting whispered to all the time. We just we were too busy or we say, I’m imagining that, you know, I am.

Andrew McGregor (33:18)
Yeah?

Hmm.

Nancy Hendrickson (33:42)
And let’s just say this too. I am by nature a workaholic and I sit in my office seven days a week working, but I try to live my life in a much slower pace. My out of work life and I think it takes that slowing down so you actually can hear or see stuff. You know, I was looking for some. I’m going to be teaching a class this summer and I was looking.

for something because I’m making a magical item for the class. And I knew in my mind what I wanted and I looked down and it was right there on the ground. So I think we get messages so many ways, we just don’t recognize that they’re messages.

Andrew McGregor (34:29)
Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I think about before I had kids, I spent a lot more time talking with folks on the other side and so on than I, you know, than maybe I currently do. Well, definitely than I currently do now. Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (34:43)
Well, you know, life.

I mean, it’s life. And that’s why I think as one ages, hopefully one slows down at some point in time. Not too much, No, fortunately, I love the work I do, so it’s joyful to work. But I think it does take some amount of slowing down, even if it’s, you know, 11 o’clock at night and you’re not sleepy.

Andrew McGregor (34:47)
Mm-hmm.

But not too much.

Nancy Hendrickson (35:13)
You’re in a slow, you’re in slow mode, unless you’re on Netflix.

Andrew McGregor (35:18)
Right? Yeah, you gotta turn that stuff off sometimes.

Nancy Hendrickson (35:22)
Yeah, you know, I’ve decided lately, well, I’ve taken lots of apps off my phone. And I’m mostly on Substack because that’s where I write. And the other stuff has so little meaning in my life. I don’t, I simply don’t care anymore. And it’s, this sounds, I don’t want it to sound horribly worse than I mean it, but.

I feel like a withdrawing from a larger community of metaphysicists, metaphysicians, and pulling back more into my own work. Cause it’s too easy to get distracted. You know, it’s like you’re reading every little post on Facebook. I don’t want to do that anymore. It dilutes my life.

Andrew McGregor (36:13)
Yeah, I also feel like to me, I always am concerned that it also dilutes my work because you know, like, I follow none of the other metaphysical stores anywhere. I don’t follow a single one of them. I don’t want to see what people are doing. I don’t I don’t want to be invested in what people are doing. I don’t want their thoughts and processes to to impact mine.

Nancy Hendrickson (36:23)
I think it does.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (36:43)
What I want to do is be engaged and with the folks that come to my store and engage with my work and lean deeply into what I have to offer and what they might need and where that overlaps, you know? So yeah, I did the same thing. I’ve changed my phone setup so that I have a work mode and a home mode. And once I’m done work for the day, all my social media is gone.

check email, I don’t do anything anymore. And that’s a real bonus as well, you know?

Nancy Hendrickson (37:18)
It’s brilliant. And I think that social media has kept us oxymoronically, it’s kept us further apart while it looks like we’re closer together. And I see people wanting to go back to in-person, I want in-person groups. I want in-person dialogue. I don’t want online anymore.

And you know, I’ve always been an early adopter of technology. I’ve been online since 1986. So I know way back, it’s the pioneer era, I guess, of the internet. So I’ve always loved technology and it comes natural to me. It’s really easy, but I’ve seen the real downfall of it taking away too big a chunk of my life.

Andrew McGregor (37:53)
Woo!

Nancy Hendrickson (38:15)
And I don’t want to do it anymore.

Andrew McGregor (38:18)
Well, I’ve always been a person who has gravitated towards depth. And this is where bringing back the podcast. It’s one of the reasons why I resurrected it after a big hiatus is I’m like, I don’t I don’t want to engage. I mean, it’s not fair. I don’t want to spend most of my time engaging in small ways. I want to spend my time engaging in big and deep ways and having these long conversations with folks.

where we can really talk about things and really explore topics and nuance and all that stuff.

Nancy Hendrickson (38:59)
So do you then spend time with people who come into your shop? I mean, are you actually in there or?

Andrew McGregor (39:04)
Yeah.

I work in the shop a couple days a week plus breaks for folks and stuff. So yeah, and then when I’m here like today, today is a Tuesday, so I’m here. I’m not officially working on the shop floor, but I’m in and out and you know, if I kind of hear something down the hall, I’ll go out and chat with people and you know, and yeah, answer questions and give my employee their lunch and stuff like that.

You know, also more and more I’ve been running meetups and hang out type stuff around tarot for folks. And so I’m at those and again, we get to have an hour and 45 minutes of hanging out and either talking collectively or breaking off into little groups and talking and engaging with the cards and engaging and stuff. it’s, yeah, it’s very satisfying to me.

Nancy Hendrickson (39:58)
Did I see that you were going to teach a journaling class?

Andrew McGregor (40:03)
Yeah, so by the time this episode comes out, the live class will have run because it’s tomorrow, but it’ll be available by recording. But yeah, I’m going to be sharing the ways in which I work with the tarot and the journaling to, know, I don’t every day read the cards, but maybe four or five days a week or sit down with the cards and journal and and so on. And then I’ve been over the last number of years really working on

trying to distill and understand what are those bigger patterns you know but especially if you’re writing you know i might write 20 pages a week it’s a lot to reread and reread you know and so like working to distill it and looking for those things you know it’s one of the biggest examples i remember a number of years now ago i was like rereading my my journal for the last quarter and i was like huh

every second post starts with the words when I am free, I am going to write and you know, and honestly, I feel like there’s a little bit of Scottish heritage in that, you know, but but, you know, and so then I stopped and thought about it. I’m like, okay, I work for myself. I’m in an open relationship. I basically I can’t change everything today.

Nancy Hendrickson (41:06)
Okay.

Andrew McGregor (41:27)
But there’s probably almost nothing about my work life that I couldn’t change over six months or a year. So like, I’m like, what am I waiting for? You know? And, and so then I just started looking at that a lot. And why were those reasons why I was waiting and why was I pining for some theoretical thing, you know, and yeah, really shook up a lot of stuff for me. But if you’re not rereading it, you don’t see that.

because you don’t feel it or I don’t feel it when I write it today and next week and next month. I don’t tune into that, you know?

Nancy Hendrickson (42:06)
You know, it’s wise that you’re doing it quarterly at least because I actually taught Tarot journaling decades ago. And so it started me on a journaling practice and I did not go back and read. so years later I went back through, I had a big box of journals and it made me really angry because every

Andrew McGregor (42:17)
Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (42:35)
Almost every entry had the same issue that I was dealing with through all these years. And if I had read it earlier, you know, I would have caught that pattern. And yet, so it took me years to say, Oh my God, I looked at all the time I wasted. Concerned with one, one thing. It’s ridiculous. So I like, I like your, I’ve started keeping one, but I do it online now because

Andrew McGregor (42:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (43:04)
My handwriting’s so bad, it’s hard for me to read it. So yeah, okay, you’ve seen it, thank you. It’s pretty bad. My sister’s is, my younger brother and I are just horrible writers. My sister’s like the perfect one, but I like online because if I do draw a tarot card, I can snap a picture and pull it into the journal. I don’t have to.

Andrew McGregor (43:07)
I’ve seen it.

huh, yeah for sure.

Nancy Hendrickson (43:33)
Describe it. It’s right there. So I do like online journaling

Andrew McGregor (43:38)
I think, you know, I have a pretty extensive background in like esoteric stuff. You know, I spent the first 15 years of my tarot life only working with the Tothdeck and Crowley’s book, right? And, you know, really, really into that side of things and all the sort of ritual and other things that you could get into if you’re obsessed with it. And so for me, the sort of Roman numerals for the trumps and the number and

Nancy Hendrickson (43:44)
Yeah.

Wow.

Andrew McGregor (44:08)
the elemental sign for the miners or like a shorthand for king queen whatever. I’ve spent so long notating that way that I can just look at it immediately. My writing of it triggers that image almost. It’s so encoded at point. Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (44:25)
Well, yes it would.

You know, I used to do this. I don’t do it anymore, but if I had trouble sleeping, I would picture the tarot cards starting from the Ace of Wands and I would go through every suit and then all the majors. And that would always put me to sleep. But I do. I mostly got through all the minors. I got through several of the cards, but

Andrew McGregor (44:43)
Nice. How far did you get most nights?

Okay.

Nancy Hendrickson (44:54)
It was like my version of counting sheep. And so then this was Robin Wood. I would always see Robin Wood tarot. So then I would switch to Druidcraft. If Robin didn’t put me to sleep, I went to Druidcraft and tried to picture all those cards. But even if you’re not doing it trying to go to sleep, it’s a great exercise that you know the deck that well.

Andrew McGregor (45:23)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of that that comes from working with it a lot, but I’ve definitely spent time, you know, at one point in my Toth journey, I would just pull a, I worked my way systematically through the deck and I would just sit with a card for 20 minutes and just write, make little notes, look at it, look at it again. And you know, there are things that emerge, you know, and sometimes those are things that are actually in the cards.

Nancy Hendrickson (45:45)
Really?

Andrew McGregor (45:53)
sometimes there’s just things that you see into the card maybe you know and a lot of information kind of can come through that that opens you up you know so

Nancy Hendrickson (45:58)
Yeah.

I’ve never used that deck because when I first started with tarot, I was in a metaphysical bookstore and a sample was on a shelf and for people to look at, I reached out to pick it up and a voice literally right behind me said, don’t ever touch that deck. And I thought it was a friend of mine and I turned around and nobody was there.

So I psyched, that is always like, okay, I’m not, I think that is not the deck for me. Also, Tarot of Demarse, I struggle with that deck. It’s just my brain won’t wrap itself around it.

Andrew McGregor (46:38)
Yeah

Yeah, it’s funny how that goes, right? I think and I think really need to listen to that. You know, so I was working with the Toth Deck for a long time. I started working as a reader full time. And at the peak of my reading career at the store that I started at, I would see 30 to 50 people a week in like half hour increments. So I was just reading and reading and reading and reading.

Nancy Hendrickson (47:17)
Wow.

Andrew McGregor (47:21)
And I just, found myself repeating myself, you know, you just like, you know, sometimes getting to this thing where it’s like, he’s so wants initiating this. You just, and I’m just like, you know, and so then, you know, I bought a new deck. And so I would work with a new deck and I’d work with, you know, and maybe every six months I would be like, okay, I’m stuck again. And sometimes I would cycle back or shake them up, but sometimes I would just get a new deck.

Nancy Hendrickson (47:33)
yeah.

Andrew McGregor (47:49)
I got my first Marseille deck during that era and I was kind of thinking maybe it was time to put the Marseille deck away. And as you say, I heard this voice clear as day, Andrew, if you would like to give good readings, you should only read with the Marseille deck. If you don’t care what kind of readings you give, do whatever makes you happy. And so,

Nancy Hendrickson (48:13)
Okay.

Andrew McGregor (48:15)
it’s very rare that I ever read for clients with anything but a Marseille deck. I bring other decks to hangouts and other spaces and stuff like that. And after sort of working with the spirit that said that to me over a number of years, they’re an ancestor of mine. They’ve been dead for over 300 years and they read with the Marseille when they were alive.

Nancy Hendrickson (48:20)
That’s so interesting.

Wow.

Andrew McGregor (48:44)
And so they show up in my readings and they whisper little things and tell me this and tell me that. And every now and then they even speak directly to clients. But they are equally as blunt with clients as they were with me in that moment.

Nancy Hendrickson (48:45)
Yeah, that makes sense.

I love that.

I mean, I love working with the ancestors. Like one of my aunts who I did know in life was a doctor. And whenever I have medical issues, she’s always the one I will ask to come in and have a dialogue with me. And she is very not subtle. She is very in your face. What are you thinking?

Andrew McGregor (49:16)
Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Nancy Hendrickson (49:30)
type of stuff, a type of information, but that for me, that’s how I want it. Just give me the information, don’t sugarcoat it. But, you know, we don’t have the luxury of always knowing 300 years back, we don’t have a pedigree chart in genealogy to take us there. But that’s why I use a pendulum so much because I can pinpoint

when and where they lived and information about their life.

Andrew McGregor (50:03)
Do you have like a kind of set of questions that you go through for that or how’s that process?

Nancy Hendrickson (50:08)
No,

because one question will really organically lead to the next question. So like I knew somebody was in Louisiana, but I knew they had been on the northwest coast of France. So it was, I couldn’t have a set set set of questions. It was really like to try and pinpoint the year.

They left France, came to America. You know, were you married? Did you have kids? So those kinds of things I will always ask. But it’s then you have to dig a little deeper and be creative in the questions you’re asking. You know, were you widowed? Did you remarry? And so those questions are more organic than me having a list.

Andrew McGregor (51:02)
Yeah, it makes sense. My guide who goes by Melinda with the cards, she and I actually wrote a year long series of blog posts together. And I’ll link to that in the show notes for this episode, know, every week I would sit down and dialogue with her and then write something based on that and then take it to her and she’d be like, yeah, it’s good or…

Nancy Hendrickson (51:16)
wow.

Really.

Andrew McGregor (51:31)
that’s not what I said or you know whatever right and yeah this was a lot of like spiritual advice and ideas around reading cards and stuff like that that kind of came out of that for sure so

Nancy Hendrickson (51:31)
That’s the thing.

You know, I love that. And you know, I also was thinking back to people I’ve worked with. I think what’s most surprising for them is that, especially if they grow up in a toxic household, is how much their ancestors want to help them, how much information they have to give, and how grateful they are that you reach out to them asking for help.

Because I noticed, my mom lived to 95, and in the last couple years of her life, she always bemoaned the fact that she felt like she was useless, that people didn’t need her anymore. So I think that may be why people in spirit love that you do need them, you’re asking for their help. Because I think we humans, we like to be helpful. Except some political people in the states right now.

but.

Andrew McGregor (52:44)
Well, there is that, right? Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (52:46)
Yeah,

there is that, sadly. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (52:49)
Sadly, Aye,

aye, Yeah, what a time to be alive.

Nancy Hendrickson (52:58)
The best of times, the worst of times.

Andrew McGregor (53:00)
right exactly

is there is there anything that you’ve you’ve learned from your ancestors or that maybe you’re doing to kind of boil yourself up during during the complicated yeah

Nancy Hendrickson (53:15)
times like this,

you know, for me, the best thing I can do is to write and hope that what I’m writing is helping somebody else heal. And, you know, a lot of people in kind of resistance work, their work will go out to kind of the collective. And mine is much more one-on-one that if you come to me,

and you go away feeling better, something’s been healed, then that’s my work. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (53:52)
Yeah, I totally get that. feel like being of service is definitely a thing that helps me during these times. You know, I’ve started a weekly, just a little short video on like coping with life during crappy times, you know, and each one’s just got a little idea of something that folks could try. And, you know, not all of them are for everyone, not all of them work in every situation. But, you my plan is just, you know,

we’ll see probably through the rest of the year. I’m just gonna keep putting these little things out so that folks can try them out and see if they can find something that helps them. And then as you say on the personal level, when folks come into the store, come to get a session and so on, yeah, it’s definitely working to lift everybody up.

Nancy Hendrickson (54:31)
That’s a great idea.

Well, you know, I came to Tarot as a healer because the, I don’t know if you know who Jessica Macbeth is, but she wrote the Ferry’s Oracle book and the Brian Froud first deck, not the second one. But she, we have been friends for probably 50 years.

Andrew McGregor (55:11)
a lot.

Nancy Hendrickson (55:13)
And she was always a healer. So I always took classes in healing way before Tarot. And so I will always say my base is as a healer more than a Tarot person. I think that’s why being of service, for me, that’s a healing thing, is using Tarot to help you heal. And you know, you may only heal a tiny bit today, maybe a little more tomorrow.

but I’m happy for that.

Andrew McGregor (55:46)
Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, healing is a healing is a process and, know, and I think that, kind of to go back to our, bit from our earlier part of this conversation. And sometimes you can be like, you know, I’m healed enough on this and now I’m done with it. I’m gonna stop looking at it. I’m gonna stop leaning into it, you know, cause I think that, we can have those incremental things. And I think there are times where.

Nancy Hendrickson (55:54)
sure is.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (56:15)
You know, it’s good to be like, all right, that’s enough. I gotta go out in the sun and enjoy an afternoon.

Nancy Hendrickson (56:18)
Yeah.

Exactly. That’s totally true, Andrew.

Andrew McGregor (56:26)
Yeah. So.

Nancy Hendrickson (56:28)
So

would you like to know where you can mostly find me?

Andrew McGregor (56:31)
Yeah, I absolutely would.

Nancy Hendrickson (56:33)
So I write on Substack and it’s just nancyhendrickson.substack.com. started my site there over a year ago and I posted close to 100 pieces and I was going to just do ancestral tarot but I have many more things I’m interested in so I’ve ended up also writing about

kind of odd supernatural things I’ve experienced or sometimes I call them like holes in the universe where I feel like I’ve skipped through some other dimension and now I’m still in the same one but I did a skip over. I just like to write about things that I feel open people to what’s not always explicable.

Andrew McGregor (57:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, what’s, what’s your, your favorite or what stands out as your, you know, inexplicable hole in the universe kind of thing.

Nancy Hendrickson (57:39)
you know,

my sister who’s older than I am, we’ve done road trips for 20 plus years and we were at a, it’s called Hoven Weep and it’s up in the corner. It’s the four corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. And you had to climb down one canyon wall, walk across the canyon and up the other canyon wall. And it’s a very narrow trail.

we could hear somebody running coming up behind us on the trail, so we both stepped off, except nobody was there. And as we went a little further, we could hear flute music floating up the canyon. It’s ancestral Pueblan ruins. I mean, that’s just one of many. I’m getting actually goosebumps as I’m telling you this. It’s experiencing something.

Andrew McGregor (58:29)
Yeah, me too.

Nancy Hendrickson (58:36)
that all of a sudden has changed. I’ll tell you one more quick one. There’s a local park that I like to walk in and I know it incredibly well, because I’ve walked there so much. And one day I was walking and there was a picnic table in cement that it was well used, it was chipped, but it hadn’t been there before. And it’s like, where did that come from? And yet…

That’s why I felt like I’d kind of stumbled across a different universe or a parallel universe. There’s just so many times things like that have happened to me. So I like writing about them. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (59:16)
That’s awesome. Yeah.

Well, folks should definitely check out Nancy’s Substack and as well, you have the two books on Tarot and Ancestors out right now as as well as the a friend Oracle. Yeah.

Nancy Hendrickson (59:30)
I do.

Yes.

Fortunately, you know, because I live so close to the Mexican border, October is huge here for Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, and that’s what the imagery on the Ophrenda Oracle is based on. But San Diego’s old town, there are altars everywhere, and people are always invited to put a picture of an ancestor on one of the altars.

And so I always put family pictures and because I was so close to my mom, she loved Snickers candy bars. So I always will take a Snickers and put it on the altar too. And that’s where a lot of the imagery came from. It’s very day of the dead imagery. And I love working with that deck.

Andrew McGregor (1:00:25)
Yeah, I really enjoyed it when we were hanging out in Kingston as well to get to see insights into that. Cool. Well, thank you so much for making.

Nancy Hendrickson (1:00:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, perhaps. Yeah,

perhaps I will see you at another who knows what. Me too. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (1:00:39)
I sure hope so. All right. Thanks for making time today.