I’ve seen the idea attributed to Keanu Reeves, but don’t judge yourself harshly for what you didn’t know. Some things, some emotions, take time to process. Respond to circumstances as best as you can now, but respond differently as you learn more. In the words of Alan Watts “you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.”
Seven of Pentacles:
“You reap what you sow” cuts both ways.
It is a promise of consequences to your actions, effects that you cause.
It can be a warning of unkindness coming home to roost, but by the same token it can be a promise of good things coming home as well.
Sow well, reap well.
Today we are using the Normal Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund in the Action Eases Anxiety layout.
What it is: The Fifth of Winter (peak of the test)
What to do: The Masterless Knight (wild card)
How to do it: The Courteous King (tragedy and compassion)
I am reminded of the old adage that “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is taking action in spite of it.”
This old meaning of courage is important in these new times.
These cards hint that things are just as bad as they seem. Denial serves no good purpose. The old ways are gone, beyond repair.
The only way forward is to create something new, something courageous and something profoundly compassionate. Here I ‘hear’ the song “Miss Couragous” by the 1990s band The Nixon Clocks.
Old institutions can no longer guide us. I ‘hear’ “religion must fall.” Given my personal background, this feels particularly directed at American evangelicals. May they become social pariahs.
Find your own unique way. You are the king of your own inner kingdom but with no control or dominion over other people. Rule your inner world with wisdom and compassion. Compassion directed toward yourself and toward others.
Wishing you a courageous week
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I like to think it’s a writer’s thing.
I call it the niggles when a thought captures your creative imagination and keeps poking at you until you write it. The Ten of Swords has been a little like that the past couple of days.
Had the niggling notion to draw a card for Wednesday (two days ago) but didn’t get anything posted after drawing the card because life, day job and everything. I drew the card with the intention of expanding Sunday’s Action Eases Anxiety reading, Cresting Wave.
I originally wrote Action Eases Anxiety as a 2 card layout showing, essentially, what it is and what to do. The cards describe current energies and give a suggestion about how to best navigate them. My thought was to add a third card …. a how-to-do-it card, which would flesh out the sentence, and let the layout echo parts of speech: subject-verb-object in a vague sort of way.
The new, third card was the 10 of swords and it prompted an avalanche of random sayings and platitudes plus a bonus earworm of a song from one of my favorite albums back in the day. It all pointed toward the 10 of swords keyword surrender. Often this surrender is the wave a white flag and admit defeat kind that the dire-looking Pamela Smith artwork would indicate.
In this case the surrender word has a different connotation. It is more like acceptance but not acquiescence. There is an element of going with the flow that we see in the six of swords, but with a much more disturbing undercurrent and context than the six would carry. This card connects to the previous reading in a way the six could not.
Surrender is a way to persist.
Someone on Twitter several years ago captured the absolute essence of this card as it presents today. I can’t remember who it was, but I want to say it was author Chuck Wendig in his You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton era. Whoever it was, they described the Ten of Swords something like “yeah, you are laying on the floor in utter defeat, but while you are down there you look under the sofa and find the car keys you lost two weeks ago.”
Today, the so-called negative aspects of the card are only negative or bad from a hyper active, frenetic, pushing, over-achieving point of view. Sure, it’s bad from an all-yang sort of perspective. If you look at it from a more yin-balanced perspective, surrender IS persisting.
Surrender lets you understand your situation and deal with it honestly and rationally (after all, intellect is a swords thing.)
A psychiatrist at a hospital where I worked a long time ago once said that “the decision not to decide is still a decision.”
So by that same token, waiting and watching IS doing something.
Yes, it’s true that if you wait for the perfect time to do something you’ll never do it because the time is never perfect, BUT timing can be better if not perfect. Waiting for perfect is the problem – being thoughtful and strategic is not (again a swords / air / intellect thing)
Surrender and retreat isn’t defeat, it is advancing in a new direction.
“He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”
Adaptation is survival, and that is the key to persisting in this energy.
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The Action Eases Anxiety layout gives us a look at the current energy for today or the week. It shows what the energy is, then suggests a good way to deal with it. Whenever you have some small bit of understanding and an action plan, those ideas together can ease anxiety and worry a little bit. It’s no grand prediction about what will happen, but a solid suggestion how to move through this current energy with a little bit more peace of mind.
Like I’ve always said: Tarot isn’t about predicting what will happen in life – Tarot is for figuring out what to do when life happens.
What it is: New Moon (reversed) – fragile potential
What to do: Five of Winter – persist
There is much potential around you, but it can be easily thwarted. Don’t sell yourself short. Persist. Don’t bail out just when the worst is about to be over.
I ‘hear’ (meaning the intuitive interpretation comes as words or sounds instead of mental images) “It can’t rain all the time” from the 1994 movie version of The Crow.
I am also reminded or the adage to not change horses mid stream.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
It’s also said that it’s darkest before the dawn. Don’t give up just before the sun peeks over the horizon.
Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.
And all the platitudes and proverbs like that.
In other words, yes it’s hard. Yes it’s a mess. Hope is over the crest of the next wave. Don’t wimp out at the last minute. Dig deep you’ll make it over the crest of the biggest wave sooner or later.
shown: The Normal Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission. Learn more at publishinggoblin.com
It tracks.
Today is a good day for the three of cups.
Cups represent emotion, and our emotions have been, collectively speaking, taking a breathing the past few months to years. The energy has been intense lately, especially here in the US. The world rightly hates us. We hate us. Terrible things are happening and if the people in power aren’t actively instigating it, they are tacitly allowing it.
Which only makes it more important to claw back a moment of simple pleasure when you can.
It’s St. Patrick’s day weekend. Enjoy the parades. Enjoy the beer. Enjoy being with friends if you can. Take a breath or take a nap and then get back at it.
Happy Pi Day to all who celebrate.
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Change is inherent to life. Change is inevitable. Change is at hand.
The energy in today’s reading is entirely about world events, not an individual situation – but it tells us all something we can do ease the anxieties for all of us during war, fascism and all of the overwhelming things in the world today.
The Action Eases Anxiety layout hints at what current energies ARE and what to DO about them.
What is is: The Scythe. This symbol clearly resonates with the Death card from the RWS major arcana. The energy now is ripe for making changes. In this deck’s book, Christopher Butler adds a connotation of precision. The advice here is to make smart, precise, efficient, effective changes. Be focused and targeted in what you decide to do. Do small things that you feel confident and comfortable doing….think of a magnifying glass that focuses sunlight so strongly it could ignite paper. When you are confident and comfortable, you are focused and effective. Don’t feel comfortable calling your congressional representatives? Send an email. Don’t feel comfortable carrying a big sign to a protest? Stand quietly at the protest. Quiet presence and small but persistent action counts too.
The Death card is ‘sea change’ … any big, life altering change. Like the Death card, the change isn’t always disastrous. When I was a professional reader, I saw the death card all of the time – at bachelorette parties, and even a baby shower once. Change can be very, very good change. Sure it may be the death of the maiden phase of life, but it is also the birth of wife and mother phases of life. Symbolic death of the old is necessary to make way for the new. The Scythe card here emphasizes that aspect. The Scythe clears the way for better things to come. It clears the way for you to move forward in the way that you want, the way that you must.
Here I am reminded of the powerful quote from the movie The Last Jedi where the character Kylo Ren says “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become who you were meant to be.” That captures the feeling of the Scythe card today.
What to do: The Whip is a disturbing image, typically associated with quarreling and conflict akin to the 3 of swords or 5 of wands. This connects to the underlying “Change…but in a good way” message here. To make positive, effective changes, old patterns are necessarily disrupted. This connects to the John Lewis “good trouble” reference.
Clearly this is a time of upheaval. I intuitively ‘hear’ “sea change” along with “good trouble.”
I also ‘hear’ “we are in the thick of it” and “this the darkness before the dawn”
My mind is drawn to the number 5 and the month of May. I don’t know why or what that’s about – but I hold on to hope just the same. May is only a couple of months away.
But that should NOT draw our focus away from the moment at hand. That is exactly what the first card warns us about. Any diffusion to our focus could keep the critically needed changes from sparking.
Now is the time to add your drop into the ocean of change, now is the time to add your weight to the work of bending the arc of history toward justice.
Thank you, as always, for reading. See you at the next sip!
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Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler copyright 2021 all rights reserved used with permission as published on Llwellynpublishing.com
Over the past several months I have been given images and messages about letting go, moving on, releasing what no longer serves.
That especially included romance Tarot questions which always makes people hurt and angry, understandable so. Heartbreak and loneliness are some of life’s sufferings that no one wants to experience.
Still, there is a tiny glint of encouragement, a little bit of shimmer among the ashes.
Astrology isn’t my strong suit, but according to internet memes, things are turning a corner, at least on individual levels. I’m not touching world events here. If I can give a little encouragement on an individual by individual basis, that’s plenty enough of a win. Encouraged individuals are then a little bit more resilient and able to speak and resist and do whatever else we can in the flaming, toxic social / political environment that has been dropped in our collective lap through no fault of our own.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything, but my sun, moon, and rising signs are all on this particular list. They are on to something with this meme. I was really feeling it when I wrote the Standing in the Ashes post a few days ago and can personally relate to that post.
Since I have a full time day job now and have had to remake my professional Tarot practice into something entirely different, I am basically standing in the ashes of 20+ years of work. If you resonated with that post – me too.
This corner-turning energy that has cropped up this week in spite of world events really does beg the question of NOW WHAT. Now that we’ve done the hard things, now that we are standing in the ashes of the bridges we’ve burned, what are we going to do?
Here is where the encouragement part comes in.
Reading Tarot isn’t just about the cards. To be really good at it, you also have to draw in present-moment intuition that relates to the person, situation and energy of the moment at hand when you are doing a reading.
Last week was one of those weeks where I wrote for the blog in bits, little times fit in between other necessary things. It was interesting to see the energy shift even as I was working on a post about a single card here and there over the course of the week.
The day after the post published two days ago, the mental image the card prompted came back to mind, but with a subtle but important change.
The figure on the card was facing a different direction. Not back the way he came, but at a different angle than is on the card. There was less water, no cups (symbolizing less emotional upset, more clarity, and a greater sense of calm)
Most of all, the ground was all grey, like the ashes in the post BUT with a silver and gold shimmer. It reminded me of the simulated moon dust from an old episode of Mythbusters but with the tiny glitter they add to nail polish mixed in.
Yeah, everything has been burned to ash, but that ash is shimmering with potential. The shimmer is new, compared to the same mental image from writing the other post a few days ago
The Standing In The Ashes post put the onus of rebuilding on us. Then the energy was reminding us that our intention matters. Causes have effects and we are the cause of our next experiences. It’s a little bit of a dark and burdensome message, but there is no light without the shadow. Or as Carl Jung wrote “…the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
Yes it is our responsibility to choose what we do next as we stand among the ashes of the past. Yesterday is gone…so what shall we do today to make tomorrow better?
The shimmer reminds us that among the loss, among the ashes is great potential. The ashes remind us that the same old Phoenix is there is we choose to let them rise. But the shimmer reminds us that change is forever present. Change is life. We can choose the Phoenix that rises this time.
image public domain via Wikipedia commons @lychee532
Not that much has fundamentally changed around here over the past year. In honor of springtime (and trying to distract myself that it is almost daylight ^&%@! savings time again) I’ve been editing the website and Kofi page to clean up and streamline things. The focus has been shifting since January of last year, so the details have been getting a little messy. Here’s the update for how you can support Sage Sips on Ko-fi. As always, the proceeds go toward the creation and web-hosting of Sage Sips. My goal is to keep the website free for everyone to read, browse the archives and ask questions without ads getting in the way.
Here’s the latest:
I only do private Tarot readings as a thank you gift to Sage Sips supporters. There are two ways to get one of these free email Tarot readings:
When you support the blog through the READINGS menu, you receive the same private email readings that I did as a (20+ years) Tarot professional. The layout you received is determined by the contribution levels ($3 – $30)
Buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi (virtual tip jar) and you get DM access to ask your question and a one-time daily meditation style email tarot reading.
Membership includes DM access plus free email Tarot readings anytime at your request* for the duration of your membership. $5 per month gives you the choice of a Year Ahead or Taocraft path layout, while $3 per month gives yes/no style readings.
All policies apply.
*Please note, membership readings are not automatic. You have to send a question or open reading request each time. Seeing your name and question each time helps me to do a better reading for you.
Your card for today: TEHOM
Stop and think is your best strategy over the next few days. Evaluate. Recalibrate. The root cause of the problem is the best place to solve it.
As I understand it, the Tehom card refers to the life source, the impetus of creation at the beginning of the universe. Sometimes we have to bake up to the beginning at take a fresh run at things. It may not solve current problems, but understanding the root cause of them can help us see the most effective solution. Root cause analysis may be a doorway to a fresh start.
To solve a problem, understand the source of the problem.
This continues the flow of energy we’ve seen lately with the 8 of cups Standing in the Ashes post. Understanding why boundaries had to be set, or why the things we released no longer serves us can help us in that process of holding intention for something new and better to fill that space that was created by those boundaries we set and attachments we released.
Part two of that post, Standing in the Shimmer, was originally released to members only. Stay tuned here for its release to everyone. Follow this blog to get everything directly to your in box.
Members on ko-fi get on-request private Tarot readings by email and early access to upcoming posts. Please visit the Sage Sips/Taocraft Tarot ko-fi page to see the updated membership benefits that start March 2026.
Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!
Deck: Alleyway Oracle of Secrets by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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