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Since you can’t copyright titles, I’m using this one. Consider it an homage to one of my favorite Saturday Night live segments. I would never claim to be as good as theirs, but in the spirit of SNL’s update, I do intend to keep these Friday or Saturday posts light and short. I’m enjoying the end of week check in with Monday’s pathway reading. Instead of focusing on any particular card, I thought it might be fun to take a peek back at the whole layout to see how it is unfolding, if it is unfolding or if it has totally veered off course.
No veering this week.
The contemplative energy around the four of swords has dropped off the radar, but the two of swords and four of pentacles are very much intact. The Pentacles are the brighter of the two energies. The two of swords still is very much connected to the “mystical unity” shade of meaning we talked about during Monday’s reading.
Now is the time for a practical, down to earth point of view and frame of mind. Practical, budget friendly actions. Take the stairs to save electricity level of things. It doesn’t feel like a weekend to spurge or be overly restful. It feels like a good time to invest action into things that will conserve money and resources later. Kind of like making lunches for the week that will save you time and money later. Very much a mow the lawn, catch up the laundry kind of vibe right now.
I don’t mean to sound like your mother, but do stuff now so you can enjoy the July 4th holiday or whatever else you have planned in the near future.
That being said – enjoy the weekend in spite of any chores that need attention!
Next up – Energy Path reading for the week of June 26-July 3 (should post Monday afternoon)
Six of Pentacles and quote from freethinker Rober Ingersoll
Quote via goodreads.com
Robert Ingersoll was a nineteenth century writer, speaker and lawyer famous at that time as an agnostic and freethought advocate.
The Six of Pentacles is about the flow of abundance and generosity. It often speaks about generosity of spirit as much as it talks about money or physical things.
When it comes to dice, I guess you have to roll with it.
All puns intended.
Like fiction detectives, when you are learning Tarot or a new oracle of whatever type, it pays to follow your hunches.
Today when I did the bag shake thing just like in the previous videos, two dice came out. My hunch was to keep them both.
The grey person icon looking one felt as if it was meant for today, so I’m naming that one dice six of our learning seven.
As for the other one – YODA!
Actually, I get it that this is the Publishing Goblin, in silhouette from the publisher’s logo, but some things come flying out of your brain like that. I’ve been a Star Wars fan from the beginning – I do mean the beginning way back in 1977 – and Yoda has always been a favorite.
So I couldn’t resist. When these two dice came out of the bag together I kept them both because – Yoda. And at the time I had a nagging feeling that people are getting a little tired of the long, drawn out, week by week methodical thing. I mean, that is why I charge for private readings. I have thirty years of doing this, learning this stuff in granular detail.
That’s also a little bit why I decided to learn the dice this way. It is mirroring how I’ve learned Tarot over the years. Card by card, layer by layer, with ever increasing complexity, followed by ever increasing simplicity.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einsteian
I don’t know everything. I’m still learning stuff too – this dice set included. But I think I understand the process of learning a fortune telling device well enough to explain and bring you along for this particular ride.
To review: The basic game plan is to randomly select of the 22 dice week by week, and take a look at whatever face turns up that week. As a dice is chosen, I set it aside the following week so there are no repeats and we could get on with the dice selection. Today was a twofer bonus in that part of the process.
Now that we have our seven learning dice we’ll start combining them…and at the same time look at the other dice faces as they turn up.
Each die has a them or an oracle “lord” well go through that one by one…meet the lords of our seven chosen dice, so to speak. Why seven? Seven has a long tradition of being a lucky, magical, spiritual number. I’ll leave the numerology googling up to you. It’s also a nod to the dice creator and author of the Alleyman Tarot, the Alleyway Tarot, the Normal Tarot, the Alleyway Oracle cards, descktop games and, I think, previous ebooks and an astrology blog – Seven Dane Asmund. I’ll definitely be posting about the oracle cards from the recent kickstarter once they arrive. If you want to see what all this fangirling is about, please visit publishinggoblin.com.
But back to the dice.
The grey die that I’m calling dice six is the Relations Die (the guidebook is brilliant the way it is cross referenced by dice color) This single figure, reminiscent of every social media default avitar, represents self. I ‘hear’ that song “one is the lonliest number” from what? The 60s? That one is even before my time. I get the feeling that is speaking to the loneliness that pulls people to readings in the first place. Whether is a lonely person in search of a life mate or someone who just wants to re-connect with universal energy and their own inner guidance that sense of self, a sense of isolated oneness is often the impetus for getting or doing a psychic reading of whatever variety.
It’s feeling alone that pulls us to readings, not the actuality of it, because we are never actually separate from the cosmos at large. We are connected to the oneness of everything whether we feel it or not.
In a reading, the self die-face points to the inner world. This is about your relationship with yourself, your inner thoughts, feelings, fires, passions, isolation, hopes, dreams, philosophy or spirituality. Think of Wands cards in Tarot and their aggregate suit meaning. That is the flavor I get here.
Mr. Asmund also describes it as a stand-in…very much the querants avatar within the reading. In Tarot this is sometimes called a significator card. It puts the person getting the reading in perspective with the reading as a whole.
That’s really pulling at me at the moment. I have an idea how to incorporate just exactly this into my Tarot readings….see….lifelong learning in action right there. Instead of calling the center card of my TaoCraft Layou “advice and choices” it might be more potent to call it “YOUR CHOICE” because you really are in charge of all of this: your choices cause things to happen.
I think maybe that is THE message for us today, why this dice seemed like the “today” dice of the two, and partly why it felt important to keep both
But I like the Goblin image, I gotta keep that too. I refer you to the fangirl paragraph above.
This is the Goblin Die, and this face is called inspiration. I love it because that is just what inspiration feels like. I can see where the idea of the crown chakra (energy center at the top of your skull) comes from and why it is representative of your connection to spirit and the divine.
When inspiration comes, I’ve always though it feels like the muses dropping it right in through the top of your head like a weight.
Add doink! kaching! bazinga! eureka! or any other appropriate exclamation. It fits. I like the way the guidebook puts it “Inspiration is the moment of consummate explosion.” It is the bolt from the blue and lightning in a bottle.
It could be a good keyword to add to the Tower Tarot card’s repertoire as well.
Lightning is one of those particularly potent universal symbols, it seems.
Thanks so much for reading! Next up: Energy revisit on Friday or Saturday where we’ll look at a card from our week-ahead energy path reading from Monday and see how things are unfolding.
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Well, this is interesting.
I’ve been doing these weekly readings for what, a couple of months now? I’d hoped this would happen, but this is the first time that a previous “growing energy” has moved through to be a “fading energy” card. That process alone is giving the Four of Swords special attention. It may be “fading” but honestly it feels more like “getting ready to maybe fade” The Four of Swords is still very much a prominent energy today, even if it isn’t the ONLY energy today by any means.
I’ll claim it. It’s a mood.
The Four of Swords is a big energy for me right now. It was a long week at the day job and I’m glad for the holiday today. More on that later, probably on Sage’s Other Words. I’m feeling my introverted, INTP aesthetic, cyberpunk, goth-ish side for some reason. Maybe pure rebellion to all of the sunny, hot weather we’ve had lately. I dunno.
Wherever the Four of Swords is falling into your personal energy arc – growing, strongly present, fading away, or maybe not there at all – it feels like it is asking for our attention just by virtue of showing up two weeks in a row from two different decks. This week I used the public domain Waite Smith, last week I used the Alleyman’s Tarot. The four of swords look almost opposite in the two decks, but both bark up the same tree: mind, intellect, thinking, introspection, all of the rest and abide with your thoughts and feelings sort of thing. Last week the card was asking us to engage with deep thoughts, to contemplate, to contemplate contemplation if you want to get really meta about it.
This week it is more of a think things through before you act kind of vibe. The word “ABIDE” is coming to mind here. Think the thoughts and feel the feels for a little bit before jumping into action.
The two of swords typically means indecision, being of two minds about something. I’ve always resonated with another, less known, interpretation from Diane Morgan’s excellent Tarot book Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao. No mystery why that is my favorite Tarot read ever, since it lands square in the middle of my personal wheelhouse, that liminal, Venn diagram overlap between western witchy Tarot and exoteric Taoism (meaning I follow the spiritual philosophy, not the religion)
Her interpretation is one of spiritual connection to the cosmos. The interconnectedness of everything. Oneness. Or as she put it “mystical unity” found in life. Think of the universality of the energy and the connection to the spirit and energy we talk about in Tarot. I think that is where the Two of Swords is pointing today. That connection to everything, that sense of cosmos, is a very internal, subjective, contemplative thing. If the two of swords in “mystic unity” mode is the current energy, it makes sense that the Four of Swords still seems strong because the two energies are closely related and it makes sense that the two cards would work in tandem to pull our attention to our internal world.
But in typical squirrel rave, strip your gears, 90 degree Tron-turn fashion, life switches from strongly internal to strongly external. We drop the airy, mental, esoteric swords cards right into the action side of swords and the earth element physical realm pentacles. Swords can also be associated with action (like the knight, for example) so the swords are also acting as a bridge from internal focus to real-world focus.
Even though they are nearly opposites, we begin and end with fours. I’ll let you figure out the numerology of that if numerology resonates with you. My instinct is to give a shoutout to all the April birthdays out there. A diamond ring and a sparkly, rainbow-y crystal suncatcher sort of crystal window decoration comes to mind here.
With the Four of Pentacles I get “eco-warrior” “ruthless conservation” but not on a political level…it feels very personal level. I connect it with looming potential drought. Save water. Water is life. Mind your budget and your resources. Instead of hunkering down to survive a harsh winter it feels like being disciplined in order to survive a harsh summer. Dune, both the book and movie, and the discipline of the Freman people need to survive in the desert comes to mind here. If you haven’t read the books, they are classic science fiction. I totally recommend them for a satisfying pool or beach read this summer.
But that’s the vibe on the horizon as it stands now. Mind your budget, conserve water and energy. Hopefully this is a good sign that the collective is gearing up for Plastic Free July both the Australian non-profit AND the just plain concept of reducing your single use plastics. I have it on good authority, that the blog How to Holistic will be talking more about that sort of thing in the near future.
Long story short: contemplate, connect, do
Thanks so much for reading! Next up, more oracle dice on Wednesday if all goes to plan.
See you at the next sip!
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I’m a big synchronicity fan (The Police album AND the Jungian concept)
Even after all of these years, I’ll still have days where I pull a card for the blog and get a whole lot of nothing intuitively. Luckily, thanks to the extra boost of energy from a client’s name and question / permission for an open reading – that doesn’t seem to happen for private readings. Even if it did, the solution is the same: prompts.
Have you ever seen those antique hand pumps for water? I’m not sure of the physics of the whole thing, I think Archemedes Principle has something to do with it – he was that ancient greek dude that was into sloshing water – but for the hand pump to do its thing sometimes you had to put a little water in it before you could use it to pump more water out of your well. “Prime the pump” came to mean anything that you put into something to make it work.
It’s kind of like lubrication too – oil changes for the car, oil on squeeky hinges or stuck locks – that sort of thing.
When intuition feels stuck, it is perfectly ok to prime the pump. It’s ok to look for a little extra inspiration outside of the dice or cards or whatever you happen to be using.
Look, listen and read works for me.
Look around you – does anything in view grab your attention? That might be an extra help for your intuition.
Listen – is the intuition coming through as a sound or bit of music instead of the card or dice or in place of anything visual at all? If listening doesn’t work pay attention to any scents or physical sensations that pop to mind.
Read – if nothing else works, pick up the guide book for the oracle your using or any other guides that are relevant. I have a whole collection of Tarot books, so if I’m not getting anything intuitive right off the bat I’ll browse through several to see if any of the key words hit as the right one.
Today’s dice toss was a little bit of both
My impulse impression was “infinity” because of the sideways it landed. Had a few quick thoughts that you can see in the video. After that nothing except the nagging feeling that I was missing something. The heart shape is obvious and shows Seven Dane Asmunds genius in designing these things.
Here is the Jungian kind of synchronicity here. I haven’t read the dice guidebook yet. 138 dice faces is a bit much to take on all in one go, so I’m learning the oracle dice little by little right along with you in these posts.
Just by pure but meaningful coincidence, the die lands with the image sideway, prompting the association with “infinity.” Combine that with the obvious heart shape, gives us “infinite heart.”
Go to the guidebook an the die itself is “elements” and this face means -SOUL!
(Doh! Why didn’t I think of that right off?)
Beautifully designed and communicative image – yeat again.
To quote the book “Soul, as an element, speaks to the human element of the world, and its positive and negative affects.”
Although “effects” would work there too.
The image has a light side and a dark side which also perfectly reflects human nature and warms the cockles of my Taoist philosophy loving heart.
This is the dice-face of humanity and the infinity of the human heart.
Thank you for reading!
The Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice is used with permission from Seven Dane Asmund (author of the Alleyman’s Tarot) and Publishing Goblin LLC
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A Tarot reading for the week ahead, depending on your point of view
Most of us have seen Star Wars. If you haven’t, stop what you are doing, put this post down and go watch. Then go read Joseph Campbell’s book The Power of Myth and you’ll understand why Star Wars is a classic, epic movie that shouldn’t be missed even if you aren’t typically a science fiction fan.
Point of view comes into play with Tarot readings too.
I’m happiest when I take the most gestalt, holistic point of view that I can muster, Tarot readings included.
Was feeling the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck this morning (used in the video with Publishing Goblin‘s permission) We’ve talked before about reversals, which is when a card turns over upside down relative to the person doing the reading. The Alleyman’s deck tends to feel a little wild and woolly and slippery and a little chaotic and prone to reversals – which makes it perfect for capturing the cacophony of big picture humanity and that collective big picture energy we read in these weekly posts.
Today, all three cards are reversed.
You could take that to mean we are heading into a gnarly catawampus upside down kind of week (which is entirely possible.)
Or you could take it as a reminder that if we walk around to the other side of the table and look at this from a different point of view, then everything is right side up, just as we want it to be.
I’ve said it dozens of times, but it is worth repeating when ALL of the cards are reversed. In a private reading, I’ll follow intuition about any given card’s reversal. It might just be happenstance, the by-product of slippery cards and lots of shuffling. Or it might be a real clue about something that is blocked, turbulent, challenging, stagnant or otherwise complicated.
My hunch today is that it really doesn’t matter. It is like a double negative that gets you right back where you started. The reverse of fading energy is growing energy and vice versa.
I get the mental image of a seesaw. The yin yang symbol strongly comes to mind. Balance whatever turns up this week with its opposite. The yin yang symbol, the taijitu, is actually intended to be dynamic. The balance is in constant motion, like we’ve talked about so many times before with the Two of Pentacles (you can use the search in the right hand side of the page or scroll down on mobile to browse the 2 of pentacles archives)
My hunch is that the real carry away message for this weeks reading is to be adaptive. Be light on your feet and in the moment, willing to change and balance a situation. In order to do that, we need to remember there are 360 degrees in a circle around these cards and many points of view to any given situation.
So chalk one up for Old Ben.
Let’s look at each card. But this time I’ll let you decide the point of view. You decide which side of the table you are on. The center card is the dominant, current energy either way you look at it. But you can decide if it is blocked or not, reversed or not, complicated or not.
Fading energy reversed / growing energy upright: Two of Swords
In the classic Pamela Smith artwork and the many decks based on that, the two of swords reverses. This card, made by Sean S. LeBlanc, looks and means the same thing either way. It fits right in with the gestalt thinking and adaptive balancing that the reading as whole is giving us. The classic meaning is being “of two minds” about something. Swords are associated with mind, intellect, and action. It is hard to act when we don’t know what to do and the mind is locked into a “six of one, half dozen of the other” stalemate. The image on this card is a guillotine. Right side up or up side down, fading energy or growing energy, the message of this card is cut to the chase. Get to the point of points. Strip away all of the fluff and nonsense and distractions and get to the real heart of the matter. THEN you can decide, act and find balance as needed.
Central Energy, reversed or upright: The Sun
Sunrises are beautiful.
But so are sunsets.
The sun card is about warmth, beauty, positivity and happiness. I am reminded of that quote of unknown origin (although often credited to Abraham Lincoln) that “Most folks are as happy as they make up their mind to be.”
Although the card is overwhelmingly positive, the reversal component reminds us not to go overboard in either direction of our chosen happiness.
Forced happiness doesn’t count. Walking around in a sparkly cloud of self indulgent toxic positivity doesn’t help anything. Forget happy. Take off those rose colored glasses, see things as they are and find a way to be content in the here and now. That’s the happy that lasts.
As much as I love a healthy dose of cynicism and good old GenX style sarcasm, the Sun card flows in both directions. Sometimes you have to take off those jade colored glasses and allow a little unprovoked unreasonable joy into your life.
Growing energy in reverse/ fading energy: Four of Swords
Alleyman deck creator, Seven Dane Asmund, reads this card as “the many angles of our self doubt” … again perfect for the point of view theme of today’s reading.
I ‘hear’ “how do you heal?” Basically the feel is to do something restorative for yourself especially where self confidence is concerned. That area may have taken some dings lately and you might need some repairs. I see the mental image of that social media picture of a little kid who stuck colorful stickers all over themselves (and the puppy next to them) The phrase “bandaids for the soul” springs to mind too.
Also the word “normative” comes to mind, but not in the sense of imposing norms of behavior. It feels more like adaptogenic herbs or essential oils – something that brings a thing back into normal range from either direction. Jojoba oil is an example from aromatherapy. It can moisturize excessively dry skin while helping oily skin to produce less oil.
In short this card encourages you to take care of yourself with meaningful little things as you hit the inevitable little bumps in the road this week.
Again the word “adaptogenic” comes to mind.
I see labradorite, which is a classic stone for easing transitions through life stages and adapting to change.
If you’ll allow me a little rando fangirling, my friend Amanda (Universal Crystal Love on Etsy) makes beautiful wire wrap jewelry and has a particularly good eye for labradorite. The pictures can’t do it justice.
It’s just me, my cards and my chromebook, so delivery times vary, especially nights, weekends and holidays here in the eastern US. They may be slow at times, but my readings are authentic and secure and real and just for you.
See you at the next sip for another oracle dice Learn With Me.
Psychic ability, intuition, “weird ass mystical shit” as the one Alleyman Tarot card calls it – whatever you name it, it’s a normal human thing. It’s a sense, like warmth or sight or hearing. In my experience, that psychic intuition exists as a mental echo of the five physical senses.
That is where we get the word clairvoyance. It means “clear vision.” There is a “clair” for each sense. The vast majority of the time my intuition works with mental images or sounds, songs and words (clairaudience.) I always explain in a new private reading that is what I mean when I say “see” for the mental images and “hear” when the intuition comes to mind as words or songs.
I love it when intuition works with popular songs, TV and music. It is a shared experience for a lot of people so it is an easy way to communicate a concept.
I’m a bit of a foodie, and I’ve studied a little aromatherapy, which has opened taste and smell as an intuitive prompts, but they much less common than the other two.
Today we went straight to the classic rock radio station. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was the very first thing that came to mind when I saw today’s dice image. That was quickly followed by a snippet of The Doors that says “break on through to the other side.”
I didn’t have old 60’s (or was it early 70s) classic rock on my bingo card for today, but there it is. If you don’t know the songs I’m not surprised. I only know the Doors from snippets in movies and TV and The Wall was Junior High at the latest.
Ugh…I just realized that I was not only alive but in second grade when friggen’ Dark Side of the Moon was released. Damn. I’ve earned the GenX Tarot Xpert title just by kicking around this long.
Back to the dice. Put the image and the intuitive “wall” and “break through” prompts, I would read this image as being about mental blocks, overcoming challenges. The Ten of Wands comes to mind as a Tarot analogy. Granted with over 90 dice images, there may not be a good Tarot analogy for each one, but with 78 Cards in the Tarot deck, there is bound to be overlap.
When you are very first learning any oracle at all, you may not dial into intuitive sense or impressions right away like this. It comes with practice and that is exactly what we are doing here. Let’s use a brick wall as an analogy. Walls don’t just spontaneously appear out of nothing. They are assembled, board by board, sheet of drywall by sheet of drywall, brick by brick. Not every brick is going to trigger a spontaneous impression. That’s when you go to the guide book. That’s why it is there. Two heads are better than one. Start with the guide book, then add your own impression to get your message for the day.
Day after day, brick after brick. Next thing you know you can tap right into your own psychic skills and read dice like a champ.
OK – that being said, let’s go see how far I am from Seven’s original intent for the dice.
And in case you are wondering, no I’m not looking ahead. I did this when my copy of the Alleyman Tarot first arrived. I’d read the card then go to the guidebook and I wound up even more head over heels for the deck than I thought I’d be.
What I’m trying to say here is don’t get your underwear in a bunch over which comes first. It doesn’t matter if you go right to the guide book then add the impressions the dice plus guidebook inspires OR start with your own impressions and go to the guidebook to expand them and maybe spark some more. What matters is engaging with your intuition. All the dice and cards and guidebooks are here to help that process. All of those things “Pump Up the Volume” on your intuition if you want to throw some late 80s in with the 60s and 70s music references.
To the guide book:
The whole cube is the die of obstacles. No surprise there. The name of this individual face is “Ruin.” But wouldn’t you know it? I have it exactly upside down in the video. I don’t get the feeling there is any significance to that, as there might be with a reversed Tarot card. That is just me not knowing the dice.
Turned upright, it is easy to see the classic Tower image from the Tarot with the bolt of lightning and falling bodies. But there is a little more to this. This is about “calamity” as much as the suddenness. Seven writes it as being an irreversible life changing event…so shades of the Death and Devil card to go with the Tower card.
Which means little if you aren’t a Tarot card reader…we are here to talk about the dice.
So sudden, life altering disaster.
It happens to the best of us.
It happens to all of us.
And life altering chaos and disaster is a wall of sorts. How do you get back to living when your old life is no longer an option? How do you move past the pain and chaos?
The thing that caught my attention was Mr. Asmund’s reminder that it is ok to feel the pain of the things in life that hurt us. Numb isn’t necessarily better.
Pain is important. Both physically and emotionally it alerts that something is wrong. It lets us know when attention is needed, possibly action too.
Pain and loss and irrevocable change is inevitable during the course of a lifetime. But that doesn’t mean that this dice or any of those Tarot cards are predicting imminent disaster for you any time soon. Don’t talk yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead allow this to be a gentle reminder.
If disaster has happened, then you can continue, brick by brick, to recover. Things may never be the same, but they can be made better. You survived.
If disaster is happening now…why are you reading this? Go do what needs done. Take care of yourself and matters at hand.
If you are ok now, drink it in. Savor it for as long as it lasts. Right now, this present moment is precious.
Momento mori. Momento vivere.
Remember all things die. Then go, remember to live.
On that blissful note…
Thank you for reading.
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*Publishing Goblin Oracle Dice used with permission of Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC
Tarot isn’t tied to time, even in these little readings that look just at the week ahead.
That is the whole reason I don’t do classic “past-present-future” readings. Tarot is about energy, and energy is all about flux and flow. It doesn’t keep to a schedule. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has tells us … “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” By the same token, the universe is under no obligation to match our calendars and schedules.
Sometimes the best Tarot can do is to help us make our way through the unknowable chaos as best as we can.
As methodical as we may try to be about it, the way Tarot does that is by engaging our pure, raw, natural human intuition.
My method and structure for these readings is that the right side card represents energy that is fading at the moment and probably won’t have a large influence during the week. The middle card is the dominant energy, our primary food for thought or the suggested tactic for getting through the week. The left card is growing energy that may have progressively more influence as the week goes on. This is an idea or issue that is on the horizon and warrants our keeping a weather eye on it as the pirate movies say.
Sometimes intuition comes along and chucks that whole structure right out the window.
Today, the energy is less about the general flow of the week and more about individual processes. Instead of a growing energy that gradually replaces a fading one, this is more about three energies that are simultaneously present, but in different proportions. The mental image here is a sound mixing board, with all of those little slidey things that let you turn up some parts and down others. The CD player I had back in the 80s had something like that on it, and of course we all had the bass turned up to max…but that’s beside the point.
I think the real point is that we are all creating our own individual mixtape of energies this week and there is no real overarching collective zeitgeist for a change. That individuality in the middle of the collective is kind of the core message of the thing: Stand strong in your individuality. That will in turn allow you to better show up for your life and for the important people in it. When that happens, life will in turn show up for you when you need it.
Here the mental image shifts to one of those speckled quartz granite countertops, with all the pieces being part of the one smooth stone. We are individuals with individual integrity (knight of swords), yet we are all connected (three of cups)
Typically the Knight of Swords is about courage, daring, and pushing beyond your comfort zone. But what if your comfort zone IS the daring thing?
We live in – ah – interesting times.
For some, living in their true, authentic comfort zone can be a truly death defying act. For those of us who are not targets of hatred and bigotry (yet), for us to not be our fully authentic self is an act of cowardice by comparison.
In short, occupy your comfort zone. Fully. With gusto.
The internet says to show up for ourselves. When we have the courage to find our comfort zone and stake a claim to it, then we are better able to be there for other people in their quest to do the same. The Knight of Swords connects to the Three of cups.
When you show up for life in a way that is true to yourself and emotionally present for those you care about then life will show up for you. It can and will reciprocate in a deep and lasting way as symbolized by the Two of Cups.
Define your comfort zone Be fully in your comfort zone – with gusto. Then be in your comfort zone for and with others. Then life can meet you at the edges and make the comfort zone a little bigger.
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Sage Sips is intuition and contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today we continue to explore the Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice
Albert Einstein famously said that “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
That is as true of intuition and esoterica as it is of physics.
78 Tarot cards is daunting enough to learn. 22 dice multiplied by six faces each – no, wait – the one is a D12 so that is like a bonus – 23 times 6 is 138. And that’s just the symbols. I’ve been reading Tarot for 30 years and 138 new symbols and goodness knows how many combinations – I feel a little boggled by the whole thing.
Maybe that is just my tendency to overthink a little bit. There are reasons why I don’t use the Celtic Cross or any other larger layouts. Other readers – that’s up to them – but for me, I’m with Einstein. Simplicity and clarity is the key. We come to oracles to gain clarity. Oracles distill the human experience into a finite number of vague but potent symbols.
Oracle help us un-boggle life. So let’s un-boggle this new oracle. I’m feeling more teacher-ish than student-ish about this. I’ve done my student work with other oracles. Now it’s my turn to be the professor and here is our lesson plan:
Each post we’ll “pull” a new dice, by randomly jiggling it out of the pouch which I gave a good shake right before I started the lofi one handed video that you see above. The dice will be put in a row above the symbol for the day so there are no repeating dice over the next several weeks. When we have 7 of these randomly selected dice, we’ll work through each of them one side at a time until we’ve looked at all the faces of all the dice.
Then we’ll use that abbreviated set of 7 dice to explore tossing multiples dice at a time, finally putting all seven onto the reading cloth that came with the dice. Ultimately I’d like to try a reading or two hurling the whole 22 dice set at the reading cloth and see what we come up with.
Daunting? Not really when you go step by step. Simple? Yes, for the same reason. Brilliantly adaptable, customizable oracle tool? Absolutely.
Now on to today’s symbol, “The Scavenger” face from “The Alleyman” dice. (Used with permission of Publishing Goblin LLC)
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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