Nope.
Right now, the water company is jackhammering the street in front of our house…don’t get me wrong, I love me some indoor plumbing and a safe water supply, but the writing thing just isn’t going to happen right now.
jeeze….stuff on the shelf is vibrating.
Please check back tonight for yes or no Friday Frippery from Zombie Cat.
Well done, Healing Light Lenormand Tarot!
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Well done, Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler. Well done.
Gender doesn’t matter one tiny bit in a romance reading. I’ve been doing this Tarot thing for a LOT of years. I lost count how many readings I’ve done for the public decades ago.
One thing hasn’t changed in all of those years.
We don’t look like us. Gender, clothing, hair color, eye color…all of it. It’s all like a video game skin or your favorite bitmoji. Whenever I get a sense of another person lending their energy to a reading (a rare but beautiful thing) they don’t show physical form. They are blobs of light, just like the dead people in the movie Ghost.
Yoda was right.
Luminous beings are we.
Tarot itself has been around for a hot minute. So much so that it is still wrapped in arcane ideas and assumptions, like my personal nemesis, the highly christianized iconography in early decks including the RWS and many of its derivatives.
Some decks change the page to princess in some attempt at gender equality, but the deck largely adheres to a gender binary: king/queen, emperor/empress, high priest (pope, hierophant)/ high priestess. Fortunately the vast majority of the deck is neutral pips, numbers, objects and abstract ideas.
Lenormand is similar in that number 28 and 29 “The Gentleman” and “The Lady” respectively are the only gendered human figures. With the exception of the easily gender neutral “Rider” (courier) the remainder of the deck is non-human, non-gendered animals and objects.
Most of the time, The Lady and The Gentleman by and large seem to be significators, stand-ins for the person getting the reading. If I’m understanding it correctly, you just swap out the card in the layout to suit the gender identity of the read-ee (be it yourself, a querent, a sitter, a client, or whatever term you use for the person getting the Tarot reading.)
Other times, the guidebook hints at these cards can be general archetypes, like yin or yang, anima or animus, the divine feminine or the divine masculine.
However, when these cards are paired with the stars card, it can hint at that special someone or a spouse / life partner. In a larger layout, it is possible to have both a significator card and a romantic interest card. This deck gives duplicate cards so the cards can accomodate the gender identities of both, even in same sex instances.
Bravo, Christopher Butler! Bravo!
Today, we have the male presenting silhouette of “The Lady” Card paired with the Crossroads card.
My first impulse was a roaring, protective EFF the establishment! Be your true self!
The crossroads piece of it is self-evident. Purely about decisions, choices – and important ones at that. It feels like it is about choosing a life direction.
The advice seems to be, that if you have a choice you are pondering right now, consider this-
What choice would you make as your truest self? What choice would you make if, in a perfect world, you could have things turn out any way you want? What choice would you make if you were completely unhindered and had absolutely zero f*cks to give?
What is stopping you from doing exactly that?
Be safe, friends, always. But be your true self whenever you can because that true self is a beautiful, wonderful, luminous being.
Next up: Free-for-all Friday. Those posts are pure in the moment who-knows-what.
See you at the next sip!
Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler, copyright 2019 all rights reserved Lo Scarabo publisher, used with permission.
The people and the numbers have spoken! Introducing an interactive and personal single card meditation card of the week Tarot reading
Private readings are open. Order HERE anytime, no appointment needed.
After the reveal, scroll down for your card reading.*
The people and the numbers have spoken.
I’ve gotten some nice feedback about the “you choose” style of readings. It makes the reading feel more personal than a single collective card BUT the shorter format is better than the longer layouts. I’m still tweeking the timing to give enough time to choose and enough time to see your card. That part will improve in coming weeks.
So BEHOLD! One card meditation readings are back but in you choose style! I plan to do these as a guidance card for the week, but if you have any suggestions or feedback as we go along, I’m open to that – and so are the comments below. Or click over to the Ask Me Anything page and, well, you know what to do. Unless I hear something drastically different, I plan to flow with this for a while. The general plan is for “You Choose” on Mondays, “Learn With Me” posts on Wednesdays, Freestyle on Fridays (I won’t promise those will even be Tarot related) and the weekly Substack newsletter at some point during the weekend.
THAT being said, let’s get on to the good stuff, the cards.
Nine of Cups
I hear “happy endings” from a song that I don’t recognize. Might be something from the 90s, but I can’t dial it in enough to tell. This card is about just exactly that – happy endings.
Classically this card is often associated with contentment and family / holiday gatherings. I often get a fall & winter holiday vibe from it. This feels more like a January card – the holidays are in the rear view mirror and last year is well and truly tucked away.
Earlier today, Theresa Reed posted her card of the week as the Fool…new beginnings. These cards are two sides of the same large zeitgeist energy.
If you chose this card, this is a good vibe week. Things are wrapped or wrapping up in a good way that makes room to roll up your sleeves and get after whatever is next.
Ace of Cups
Cups typically symbolize emotion, intuition, and our closest relationships be they friends, family or romance. The ace always seems closer to the emotion and intuition aspect of the suit than the relationship aspect of it. That is very much the case for today. This card feels more off to the side and individualized than the nine does.
The nine feels like the big, collective energy card but the ace feels much more one to one. There is no way for me to ever know this, but it would be interesting to how many people chose which card. I wonder if more people picked the “collective” card and fewer people picked this one because this is the one they really needed.
If you picked the Ace of Cups today, first of all, well done for following your own intuition instead of the collective energy. This card feels like a validation of just that – your own creativity and instincts. “Muse” comes to mind. Your creative muse may well drop something in your lap soon, if it hasn’t happened already. When inspiration comes, this card is encouraging you to follow it at the same time it is giving you a pat on the back for your natural ability to hear and follow that kind of inspiration.
Judgement
This card stands out as being the only major arcana card of the three.
The energies this week may be important for you and are worthy of your attention and contemplation. Pay attention to the spirit part of your mind, body & spirit life balance.
Give yourself second chances. Never waste a good second chance.
By the same token, use your heart and head so that a second chance isn’t needed. Honor what you know and need and what you know you need. the first time around.
As a secular person, the religious iconography in Pamela Smith’s artwork for this card is always more annoying than inspiring for me. If you picked this card but it just isn’t resonating, by all means, please look for the inspiration you feel. Try googling the Judgement card and looking at other decks to see if another version of the card speaks to you more than this one.
I’ve found that many decks rely on this kind of imagery and options are hard to find. My favorite right now is “Karma” from Ellen Dugan and Mark Evans’ Witches Tarot which uses and eclipse and the term karma to bring ideas like contemplating the consequences of our choices and renewal. There may be dark time during an eclipse but light returns on the other side.
Thank you all for reading. Next up, in Learn With Me, we continue two card Lenormand readings.
See you at the next sip!
*if it went by too fast – left was 9 of cups, center was ace of cups and right was Judgement.
Sage Sips blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
The Knight of Cups is classically known for symbolizing travel, flirting, and romance. It’s the card that most closely matches that “you’ll meet a handsome stranger” sort of trope in books and movies.
Dreams is another key word I’ve seen pop up. Intuitively I get “vision quest.” I don’t think it means the old 80s film with the Madonna song.
It’s not the achievement focused “chase your dream” kind of thing either.
This card reminds us of inner questing. Why waste time chasing what is right there inside, right now?
Actually the inner dreams, the gift of insights that our subconscious minds and Jung’s collective unconscious can give can be more elusive than the physical realm dreams of things.
I feel pushed to talk about dream journaling. Journaling as a whole is a wonderful thing. Just grab a pen and a notebook and have at it. The only rule is there are no rules. Keep it as private as you want, write anything you want as much or as little as you want. Write to understand. Writing a journal can explain yourself to yourself in amazingly healing, empowering ways.
The knight is bringing us a cup of water and intuition and an invitation to write our dreams as soon as we wake up and remember them – or just write to make up our dreams while we are wide awake. After all, you can’t chase a dream until you know what it is.
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Learning Lenormand Tarot
This set of cards has the feel of a child who picks a wild flower and gives it as a gift. The energy of it is just that sweet, just that simple. The universe has gifted us with a bouquet of clover and wildflowers.
Life isn’t always good. It seems like we spend a lot of time talking about how Tarot is valuable because it can deal with the shadows and how it isn’t all toxic positive in denial of the realities of a situation. Life isn’t all love & light.
But neither is it all doom and gloom. “It can’t rain all the time” as The Crow movie told us. Sometimes you just have to take yes for an answer.
That is what today’s cards are all about. Lenormand cards have a reputation for being direct, no-nonsense, and not pulling any punches. Maybe it is because so many people turn to Tarot when they are in some sort of emotional upset, but we tend to assume direct and no-nonsense means bad news.
Tarot, both Lenormand and RWS, are excellent at easing that kind of emotional distress. They are equally good at bringing good news and straight up reassurances too.
This is a perfect example. And, coincidentally, this is the first two card combination that is in the guidebook. The combination of The Bouquet (Love, token of affection) and Clover (good luck, like any “four leaf clover” symbolism) is described as “the ultimate combination of good luck and happiness (Buler, p. 16)
For the collective, I think this is a good reminder to unplug from your worries and indulge in feeling that everything is going to be OK. The universe has our back, it’s all going to work out in the end. Let yourself believe in magic for one minute – or a million minutes.
Try it on for size. Just for one day, imagine you are a magnet for all the good things. If you like the feeling, it is yours to keep.
Maybe the best kind of good luck is the kind you believe you have.
See you at the next sip!
Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler (art and text) © 2019 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.
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Weekend newsletter card: The Hanged Man. Want a weekly digest instead of every post in your inbox? Subscribe to Sage Sips on Substack!
I adore Hawaii.
And I adore the shaka, you know, that “hang loose,” all good, take it easy, right on thumb-and-pinky hand sign from surf culture. I don’t surf. I’ve only spent a single, glorious week on Maui. But I adore the feeling and attitude of the place and culture just like I adore Tarot, Taoism, Tai Chi, Reiki, Witchcraft and all the other things that have made my life so so so much better just for knowing about it. Just thinking about the shaka sign and all it means while I’m writing this makes me feel just a little bit better.
All of those things, unfortunately aren’t typical to southern American culture. They aren’t typical to the usual Anglo-European connotations that go with the Hanged Man major arcana card. With the Hanged man with think about “stagnation” with the connotation that it is a bad thing. That in turn implies some inherent value to striving, achieving and moving forward.
Not so, bruh.
Today’s energy around the Hanged Man card is more like a kind reminder, a friendly shaka, to take it easy.
Slow your roll.
Stop even.
Take a doggone minute, take a deep breath and be where you are.
Announcements: No COTW in observance of MLK day.
Email private readings are OPEN and the listings now include the VIDEO option. If you order, please let me know which version you want. If no selection is listed, I’ll just do an email by default.
Email readings come to your email as an attached .pdf document that includes a photo of your real-world card layout, typed card interpretation and an open psychic summary that often includes crystal and aromatherapy suggestions.
Video readings come to you as a link to a PRIVATE-share video on the Sage Words Tarot YouTube channel. You are the only person with the link to access the video. The video shows your cards being drawn, a spoken card interpretation and an open psychic summary that often includes crystal and aromatherapy suggestions.
INKMAGICK pen & ink readings are available in 1 card and five card versions, sent by mail (US only.) Handwritten and hand-doodled with a fountain or dip pen on high quality paper, these readings include card interpretations, my terrible sigil and glyph-likd doodles that show you what intuition shows me and the open psychic summary with crystal and aromatherapy suggestions. Feel the potent magick of physical paper and ink.
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Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!
Tarot reading with key and ship Lenormand cards
Let’s do a few more two card readings to get back into the swing of things after the holidays
Today we have the key with an 8 of diamonds inset, and the ship with a 10 of clubs inset.
The author, Christopher Butler, connects this with locking vs unlocking, security vs openness, secrecy vs transparency. I associate the 8 of diamonds with the eight of pentacles, which is prospering through work, effort and craftsmanship.
The ship, logically, has to do with journeying and has undertones of prosperity (ships are connected to trade and transport, after all) The 10 of clubs resonates with the 10 of swords, which connotes defeat…but also the “fall seven times, get up eight” proverb. It could be read as “perilous journey” but the peril here feels connected to the unknown, the things locked away.
“Keystone” and “cornerstone” come to mind.
There is no logical reason for it, but I’m getting that finding the key, finding the cornerstone, finding that one thing that makes everything else fall into place THAT is what is needed for a successful journey with regard to career or finances.
Next up: Freeform Friday. Not sure what I’ll post, but it will probably be a re-introduction posts that I wanted to do in blurry time that never actually happened. Either that or a cookie recipe, I dunno.
See you at the next sip!
New stuff! Same Stuff! Website update stuff!
Just finished a little light housekeeping on the website…
New! Handwritten “InkMagick” readings and video readings are back!
The same! Order Tarot readings 24/7 no appointment needed
Limited availability! Live online and in-person readings are only available on Monday afternoons by advance appointment.
2024 Schedule: There is none
Blog: Monday (your choice card of the week) Wednesday (Learn With Me) and Friday (quotes, reviews, random stuff) – maybe.
Social Media: I’m on Threads most days if you want to say hello. You can find Sage Words Tarot content on Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok and Instagram, too.
Please enjoy the FREE collective energy Tarot readings here on the blog and social media.
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Seriously, tell me what you think
Welcome to 2024 and the first Card Of The Week of the new year.
Since the New Year reading, I’ve gotten some nice feedback about the ‘you choose’ format we used.
With all of the fast pace question-in-the-comments live readings that are available now, it seems the slower, more contemplative, interactive readings aren’t as common as they were a couple of years ago. These kind of pick your card / slow reveal readings used to be all over the place.
I’m bringing them back.
It feels a little more intensely personal than quick comment/live readings or purely collective energy readings. Let me know what you think. If you like it, we can keep it. If no one says anything, I’ll decide in a few weeks which format to use most of the time. It’ll either be a you-choose card for the week like this or back to random collective energy card for the day posts.
Watch the video, pick your card. In the future, I expect that you’ll be able to scroll back down here and read a longer, more eloquent, dammit I’m a writer not a YouTuber interpretation for the card. Today, it was all I could do to get back into filming at all. Even in low-tech, lofi, laid back mode. I don’t have anything to add to the video this time.
But seriously – comment or email or use the Ask Me Anything page to let me know what you think of the you-choose format.
You choose and I won’t have to.
Next up on the squirrel-rave playlist* Learn With Me: Lenormand returns, hopefully on Wednesday
Thanks so much! See you at the next sip!
*Squirrel Rave Playlist is my nickname for the no-schedule schedule and not-plan plan for 2024.
*Inspired by the internet meme “I don’t have ducks, I don’t have rows – I have squirrels and they are hosting a pagan rave.”
*The general not-plan for the blog is a COTW in some format or another on Mondays and Learn With Me posts on Wednesdays, weekly digest newsletter on Substack on the weekend, and everything else being just pure random intuitive inspriation.
Weekend Substack: The Sun Tarot card, Lincoln, and Lau Tzu
He probably didn’t actually say it, but Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying “people are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
I find it true, but more nuanced than it seems.
It isn’t about conjuring up pleasant feelings from nothing in a rose-glasses toxic positive kind of way.
Oh no, my friend. It is much worse than that.
Making up your mind to be happy is more likely about accepting your circumstances for what they are and allowing the natural contentment and happiness come out. Happiness is allowed, not created.
Time and again life points back to one painting for me. Not one painting but one allegorical theme in traditional Chinese paintings: The Vinegar Tasters.
The painting shows Buddha, Confucius and Lau Tzu (author of the Tao Te Ching, the originator of Taoist philosophy) Buddha and Confucius are making faces while Lao Tzu smiles. It’s been said that they think they vinegar tastes sour, bitter and sweet respectively.
That’s not quite it.
Lau Tzu isn’t just magically or delusionally conjuring up a sweet flavor without the help of any magic berries any more than we conjure up blissed-out happiness out of thin air. Lau Tzu is tasting the exact same thing as the other two. He’s just smiling because that sour and bitter vinegar tastes just exactly how vinegar is supposed to taste. He’s smiling because the vinegar is being true to its authentic nature. He’s smiling because life is what it is.
Lincoln’s making up your mind to be happy is similar. Making up your mind to be happy isn’t making happy out of thin air. Making up your mind to be happy is making friends with life and the people and the things in your life…even the parts are like a big old barrel of sour, bitter vinegar. Smile because they are being exactly what it their authentic true nature to be. Then smile because you, just maybe, can be that way too.
Sage Sips blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee. Tune in tomorrow for a new Monday thing. See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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