Tarot, Timothy Leary, Touch & Transcendence: An Evening with Joshua Milne at The District House
This week at The District House, we gathered for an evening that felt both ancient and futuristic — playful and profound. Author, health coach, sobriety coach, and bodywork practitioner Joshua Milne joined us for a deeply experiential conversation that reframed the Tarot not as fortune-telling, but as a living framework for understanding human development and the evolution of consciousness.
Interviewed by Hannah Jo, Josh guided the room through stories, embodied wisdom, laughter, and insight, weaving together his gypsy lineage, Gestalt awareness, psychedelic history, and decades of bodywork into a narrative that felt more like a remembering than a lesson. This was not a talk about Tarot as an abstract system, but an invitation to experience it as a map that reflects where we are, where we’ve been, and how awareness unfolds over time.
At the heart of the evening was a model inspired by Timothy Leary, who described the Tarot as a three-phase developmental journey, each phase containing eight stages that mirror the chakra system — seven energy centers with the eighth as the octave above the first. Josh framed this journey as cyclical rather than linear, reminding us that growth happens in spirals, not ladders. He spoke to the first phase, Experience, as the terrestrial stage where identity is formed through embodied living, relationship, creativity, and challenge; the second phase, Integration, as the moment awareness turns inward and lived experience begins to organize into meaning; and the third phase, Transmission, as the stage of expansion, where insight moves outward into expression, service, and contribution.
As Josh invited us out of conceptual understanding and into direct experience, District216’s very own Becca Solodon joined him to help guide the room into a meditative state.
Through a live sound bowl meditation, Becca created a resonant field that softened the nervous system and opened a shared energetic container, allowing Josh’s guided meditation to land not just in the mind, but in the body. The sound moved through the room as a gentle undercurrent, helping participants drop beneath thought and into sensation, presence, and receptivity — a moment that quietly transformed the space from audience to collective.
From there, Josh returned to the eight archetypal steps that repeat across each phase of the Tarot journey, describing them as states of being rather than destinations:
The 8 Archetypal Steps (Per Phase)
I Am — The Fool
I Create — The Magician / The High Priestess
I Grow — The Empress / The Emperor
I Love — The Hierophant / The Lovers / The Chariot
I Speak My Truth — The Hermit / Wheel of Fortune / Justice / The Hanged Man
I Understand — Death / Temperance / The Devil / The Tower
I Am One — The Sun / The Moon / The Star
I Transcend — Judgment / The World / The Fool
Rather than predicting outcomes, this structure offered a shared language for noticing patterns — how we revisit, integrate, and evolve through the same stages again and again with greater awareness and compassion.
Drawing from decades of psychedelic exploration, years of somatic practice, and a lifetime of curiosity, Josh emphasized that awareness does not live solely in the mind. Through Gestalt principles and examples rooted in bodywork and touch, he spoke about presence as something felt, sensed, and embodied. Insight, he reminded us, often arrives through contact — with ourselves, with others, and with the moment — rather than through analysis alone. Healing and integration happen when the nervous system is invited into the conversation, when the body is allowed to participate in meaning-making alongside the intellect.
The room moved fluidly between laughter, reflection, and quiet recognition as complex ideas became human, grounded, and accessible. What emerged was not a sense of being taught, but a shared experience of recognition — as if many in the room were seeing their own lives reflected back through a new lens. The evening captured exactly what District216 aims to cultivate: spaces where ancient wisdom meets modern inquiry, where curiosity is welcomed, and where community becomes the container for insight. Joshua Milne did not offer answers; he offered a framework, a perspective, and an invitation to pay closer attention to the patterns already at play. Deep gratitude to Josh for sharing his presence and wisdom, to Becca Solodon for holding the energetic field with sound, and to Hannah Jo for guiding the conversation with such clarity and care.
Until next time, may you notice the cards already on the table. 💜🌀
