I’ve been told that my email readings but especially the handwritten, hand illustrated private Tarot readings appeal to book lovers.*
I’m a reader’s reader. My written content is my best work.
I know it. You know it.
Writing is my niche and my talent and my strength.
I’m not going to water that down just for the sake of having a podcast.
Some people learn better from listening. Some people just plain prefer audio.
I know it. You know it.
I just received word that Spotify for podcasters and WordPress are ending the text to speech integration.
Unless and until I find another text to speech option, it is with some regret that I am ending the Sage Sips podcast. I have too much respect for audio learners and audiophiles to give you a second rate Tarot product. I’m not going to half-ass a spoken word recording when I KNOW I can give you significantly better quality content with text-to-speech technology.
If I can find a workable text to speech option, I’ll resume the audio blog. Until then you can find my free week-ahead pathway readings on Mondays on the Sage Words Tarot dot com website, on the Sage Words Tarot blog on ko-fi dot com and on the Sage Sips newsletter on Substack.
All three of those platforms will continue to have a mix of free and premium subscriptioncontent, because none of this is advertising monetized. The blogs and Substack are all reader supported. With me, your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s message. Premium content and private readings are what makes the free blog Tarot readings possible. Private readings are still always available in both email and live formats through the website. No appointments are needed for the email version, by the way.
I am always so grateful for your support. Your purchases help fund the practical part of creating all of this, but your time reading (or until now, listening) to the blog, your likes, your shares, your follows and free subscriptions are why ten or more years worth of Tarot inspiration exists in the world. All of you are why I do this in the first place. Together, we have created a giant pile of ideas, inspiration, art, entertainment and wisdom. Now let’s go create some more.
Podcast people, thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for listening in as the podcast changed from Clairvoyant Confessional to TaoCraft Tarot and most recently to Sage Sips. I hope audio will be back, but in the meantime please join us on the blogs for more Tarot readings, behind the scenes and ask me anything.
Blog people – I’ll see you at the next sip.
*I’ve read for other intuitives and professional Tarot readers before. It is always the biggest compliment to be trusted by a colleague like that. “Readings for readers” works for that kind of reader too.
A Tarot reading for your week ahead in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Right here, right now is all there is. All we have is this present moment. Our superpower is that we can choose IF and how to connect it to the past and the future.
Merry Monday everyone!
I like the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach. Simple is always best. Right now, functionality seems more important than elegance. Unless and until I get feedback from all of you to the contrary, I’m going to write these free for all Monday Week Ahead Pathway readings in the same format as I would a private three-card Tarot reading. It’s comfortable. It works. And it’s a Monday where I could use a few extra sips of coffee. Here we go.
The cards today are:
Fading energy: Knight of Wands
Current energy: Knight of Rings (pentacles)
Growing energy: The Hermit
General Pattern:
The Two minor arcana cards are both court cards which holds a little more energetic ‘zing’ than the numbered cards or the ace. These two minor arcana cards lead into a major arcana in the growing energy position. I take that to be a clue that the vague ennui and introvert energy from the past few weeks has indeed swung in the other direction. This is the starter’s signal we’ve been waiting for.
Go!
Now!
If we are hearing the track and field starter’s pistol, the event is a sprint. It feels like a blip, a short lived window of opportunity to get a flurry of stuff done before things quiet again for a time. If today is not the day, then look for cues this week about when to hit the start button on a project or idea that you’ve been contemplating. Hints about timing may be on the near horizon.
Knight cards symbolize action.
In the card draw video above, I’m using my current favorite deck, the Alleyman’s Tarot with the permission of Publishing Goblin LLC. The Alleyman’s deck uses disks and rings for this suit, not just pentacles. Artwork on this particular card is by Amrit Brar for the Marigold Tarot. I don’t know if I’ll ever buy another deck, but if I ever do, the Marigold is high on my list of decks to consider.
Of course the meanings and energies are all fairly interchangeable no matter what deck you use or what name you call the suit. I still call them coins instead of pentacles much of the time because I read with the Art Nouveau deck for years before branching out into other decks. But we can talk about decks another time.
Today, let’s call it rings. The knight of rings is about steady, persistent action. It has a plodding but inexorable quality about it. Consistent, unending, persistent small actions can lead to big results. Raindrops can flatten a mountain given enough time.
Don’t give up on yourself even if your enthusiasm for something good and right starts to fade. Keep chipping away and you can move your mountain too.
The knight of wands also suggests action. The earth element knight of pentacles acts, but is OK with a glacial pace over geologic time. The knight of wands is fire element. This energy may be less focused, less enduring and more chaotic but it is, well, energetic. What it lacks in focus it makes up for with high wattage and unbridled enthusiasm.
I get the mental image of an old Wile E Coyote style cartoon bundle of dynamite wired to a big old fashioned alarm clock.
The think you’ve been ticking away at is ready to blow up, in the viral internet sense of the word.
If you want to catch lightning in a bottle, you have to study electricity and stand out in a few metaphoric thunderstorms. If you have been preparing and chipping and ticking away at something, then your storm front may be on its way soon. Ready your bottle and listen for the thunder, so to speak.
I still associate the knight of wands with the TV series “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”
If you’ve worked and prepared and keep your eyes open for opportunity, magic might happen for you, too.
The Hermit is from the major arcana. Moving from court cards to a major arcana card hints that this is a time of growing activity and dynamics.
On the other hand, it IS the hermit card. By it’s nature it speaks of a return to quiet and contemplation. The lantern and guiding light that is so ubiquitous on Hermit cards is here again in the Aka Skyweb art. This energy speaks to inner guidance and self-discovery.
Slow persistant energy explodes to frenetic progress for a short time but then it needs to be reviewed. I keep getting the phrase “after action report.” Is that a law enforcement thing? Or military? Or both? I want to associate it with first responders of some sort. Preparation, followed by fast action, followed by assessment of the action followed by adjustment and improvement and preparation for the next time.
That pattern may be associated with emergency services or military readiness, but it can be a successful pattern for anyone. My attention is drawn back to the knight of rings with the notion that this advice is particularly targeted toward pentacle, coin and ring kinds of concerns. This week, this reading is very much focused on career and work and wealth. As always with this suit, there is a focus on logic, groundedness, and practicality – even when you are in the middle of a big cartoon ka-BOOM of energy and change.
I see black tourmaline as a helpful energy to protect and steady during the high energy times.
I get the scent of amber and sandalwood to also ground and balance but also support meditation and introspection and learning from experience when it is all said and done.
And there the energy steps back, with a spark of hope that you have all enjoyed the reading and find it helpful.
Thank you all for reading and listening.
The reading fits in here, too. It’s a free for all kind of week.
All of the posts on the Sage Words Tarot blog on both wordpress and ko-fi plus the Sage Sips newsletter on Substack are free for everyone the week of April 24, 2023. The Sage Sips podcast is always free on Spotify plus a variety of other platforms. None of this is advertising monetized – even if you see an ad, I don’t see a penny from it.
All of this Tarot content is supported by readers and listeners like you. If you enjoy these weekly pathway readings, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to see all of the other posts including Q&A, one card meditations, behind the scenes, quote of the day and more.
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration
Nikola Tesla
I’m not saying that tuning forks can be used in any sort of psychic way. I’m saying that psychics sorta work like tuning forks – sometimes. I’m not saying that this science explains psychics or that there is any kind of causal relationship here. I’m using this objective physics demonstration as an analogy to describe and communicate something a psychic or intuitive might experience.
K?
So all of you pedantic skeptics out there just listen for a minute. Science is the best method we have for figuring stuff out – especially physical world stuff. But in 500 plus years of years of screwing around and writing stuff down as Adam Savage put it, science hasn’t wrapped its head and arms entirely around everything, particularly when it comes to things like consciousness, philosophy, and other internal, subjective esoterica. But that, again, is a post for another day.
For now, for all of you wonderful, terrific people who have been following the main website blog, to you first and foremost, I want to thank you. I know everybody says it, but really I couldn’t do this without you. That goes triple for my private clients and ko-fi Tarot Table members. I really REALLY couldn’t do this without you. Thank you, and thank you again.
image: bitmoji
Second – sorry for all the repetition headed your way. I want to use the next week of free-for-all posts to introduce Sage Words Tarot (plus some faves from the Modern Oracle / TaoCraft Tarot archives) to the paid subscription part of the Ko-Fi blog and Substack newsletter.
Which explains why I’m back to talking about resonance again today.
Looking back to late 2019 and very early 2020, it really is remarkable how many similar questions came to Tarot readings. It seems like there was a whole cadre of people who felt like something was wrong but couldn’t quite figure out what. They felt disconnected and worried about the future for no real reason. Those were the advanced students. They were the perceptive folks who sensed the storm on the horizon that we all were about to face: pandemic lockdowns.
To no one’s surprise that pattern continued for a year or so.
Reading after reading combined with a healthy dose of my own experience, it became pretty clear what was going on. All of the collective fear, anger and anxiety about the pandemic combined with the political climate in the United State was creating a toxic energy brew that was ringing a lot of intuitive bells regardless of our awareness of it.
I like the word zeitgeist, that German word for the mood and spirit of a time, or in other words the energy of the time. Sometimes energy sensitive people will vibe with the energy around them so strongly it feels like it is coming from the inside. Outside energy makes their own tennis balls bounce so to speak.
Please, take a moment and watch the publicly available demonstration on YouTube with the tuning forks. When the conditions are just so, the untouched tuning fork vibrates from the air pressure – the sound – created from the other tuning fork of the same frequency. The second tuning fork is energy sensitive. The second tuning fork wasn’t being whacked by a mallet. It was only being whacked by the air pressure waves created by the OTHER tuning fork that was being whacked by the mallet. The tennis balls are only hanging around so you can see when the second tuning fork is moving or not.
To put it in woo woo terms instead of physics terms…the second tuning fork was reading the energy environment. The tennis balls are like Tarot cards helping to make the whole energy thing more visible and understandable.
Now imagine a whole bunch of tuning forks. Only a few have tennis balls to make the energy a little more visual. Imagine the crowd of tuning forks all have a wide range of sensitivity. Some vibrate to sound a little easier than others. Now imagine the tuning fork that is getting whacked with the mallet is bigger and much louder than usual. It puts out much stronger air pressure sound waves. The non-whacked (resonant) tuning forks all around are vibing stronger than usual, and the ones that usually don’t react to the environmental sound start to vibrate.
Like I said, this isn’t any sort of explanation, just a broad analogy. So it isn’t perfect, but it is telling that matching frequencies are needed for the resonant phenomenon to happen. Moods and emotions can be as contagious as a new virus. When the world tipped into pandemic, all of the fear and worry zipped around the globe right along with it. Because the frequency was one of fear, anger and anxiety, that is the emotions the energy sensitives felt. That’s how the vibe felt to them.
Psychic sensitives didn’t predict it – they just heard the sound at a lower volume and their tennis balls started bouncing before everyone else’s. They read the energy and picked up on the zeitgeist early in the process.
Go back to the video demonstration. Now imaging what would happen if you put a big bell jar over top of the resonant second tuning fork with the tennis balls. You would dampen the sound and possibly stop the second tuning fork from sounding at all.
That’s great if you want to shut out an uncomfortable sound or metaphoric emotion, but the problem is that it would also shut out all of the sounds, all of the frequencies, all the vibes and all of the feelings. That’s generally not an emotionally healthy thing. If it’s your job to read energy and turn it into helpful communication, not being able to read the vibe is a straight up problem.
So what do you do?
A big scary thing is hammering away at a really big tuning fork set to the fear, isolation and anxiety frequency and it feels for all the world like YOU are afraid, isolated and anxious.
Here is what works for me.
Go shields up (or bell jar down) but just briefly.
My intuition is predominantly visual. We call that clairvoyant. I get a fair amount of mental words, sound or music to go with the mental images. That’s called clairaudient. Intuition can come as smells, tastes or physical sensations too, but that seems to be much less common.
If I ever wonder if a particular emotion is welling up for a reason or if it is just the collective zeitgeist making itself known, I tend to use a visualization technique. I use imagination, which is a valid and powerful thing. Imagination may be play for children, but it can be a powerful tool for emotional health when it is wielded by a thoughtful adult.
Try this and see what you think….
The next time you feel a strong emotion or a random mood hits or find yourself in a funk “for no reason” try a little self check.
Imagine something that protects you. Imagine something around you like a protective bubble. Something bigger like that big bell jar from before or a science fiction force field or that real force field that makes same-pole magnets repel each other. If it feels better imagine yourself in a cloak that protects you. Or literally put on a jacket or wrap yourself in a blanket. Whatever you choose, use your imagination to infuse that image or that thing with the ability to shield you from any outside influence. Use your imagination to set the intention that what you feel while you are thus protected is an true and clear insight into your own emotions. It is a fair amount of mental gyration just to simply focus on you and allow yourself to feel whatever you yourself genuinely feel…but we need that sometimes.
Sometimes we need some little bit of ritual or imagination to disrupt our mundane, everyday patterns and shake us out of our mental habits in order to face our emotions for what they are.
Most of the time, I’m pleasantly surprised.
I’ll go a little starship captain and give the “shields up” order and suddenly it is all “HEY! It’s kinda nice and happy in here!” Or, to continue the Sci Fi reference, if there are Klingons off the starboard bow, I can take action to handle it.
Once you know what is internal response and what is outside sensitivity, then you can do something to help the situation.
Setting owning your emotions and healthy emotional boundaries is doing something.
Thank you so much for reading and listening.
This free blog and podcast is 100% audience supported. Please consider a substack subscription, a ko-fi membership, tipping a virtual coffee, or accessing premium content when it appears here on the main website. Private readings are now OPEN and available by email with no appointment needed. That helps too.
Next up, pathway through the week reading tomorrow morning. See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips: Tarot in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
One of my all time favorite media personalities, Adam Savage once said “Remember kids, the difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”
Part of my plotting with this rebranding and adding the Substack newsletter is to do the free three card path through the week reading on Mondays, then on Wednesdays, take a slightly deeper dive into the single “current energy” card. I’m thinking Fridays would be a good day to explore oracle cards or other divination tools like crystal casts, cold readings, channeling, pendulums, I Ching or whatever other intuition driven impulse comes along. Other posts, like Q&A or other longer reads will be entirely random. I count myself lucky to have things this organized. I enjoy having flexibility. Intuition or spirit or energy or whatever you want to call it – it doesn’t follow a schedule. Spirit guides and muses don’t give a flying rat’s patootie about social media or best marketing practices. I still don’t have ducks, I still don’t have rows, but this might make the squirrel rave playlist a little more fun for me.
And that, folks, is me following the eight of pentacles current energy advice.
All of the RWS Tarot cards have dozens of key words or phrases that have accumulated around them over the years – centuries, actually. Some are enduring and can be traced back to the writing of A.E. Waite and others, some are contemporary, either written into the guidebook for a specific deck or in a general Tarot book that can apply to any deck. The eight of pentacles (sometimes also called coins or disks) has been connected to skill, diligence, hard work, a project in progress, work, productivity, repetition, craftsmanship and more.
In addition to the long list of key words, each card can be read purely intuitively. The card and its keywords are simply a prompt or a springboard for the reader’s own human intuition or psychic skill. That opens up the reading to an infinity of meanings.
We can talk about intuitive vs key word Tarot readings later. For now lets focus on the eight of pentacles, since it seems to be resonating with one of the well-known meanings – diligence.
Or in this case it came to mind as the contemporary phrase “due diligence” which also brings to mind professionalism and discipline. Due diligence makes me think of doing what needs done to keep things right. It’s all about attention to detail, crossing of those Ts, finding out what needs to be known. It’s nose to the grindstone time. It is not a good time to phone it in and definitely not time for a f**k around and find out approach.
Do the science. Do the diligence. Write stuff down, metaphorically speaking at least.
Thanks for reading.
See you at the next sip!
*Waite Smith Tarot card image from the public domain
Hello and welcome to a whole bunch of stuff. I’m glad you are here. This is the first week of a new and hopefully stable web presence for Sage Words Tarot. Most Mondays you can find these three card Tarot readings for the week ahead in lots of places. So pour yourself a cup of whatever you like to sip this time of day and have a seat at the Tarot Table. The readings are the same no matter whether you came to the table by way of the Sage Words Tarot blog on wordpress and ko-fi, Sage Sips podcast, or Sage Sips on Substack. No matter how you got here, I’m happy you ARE here, so let’s take a look at these cards.
My hunch is to do this in the same format as I would for an email private reading. You KNOW I’m going to tell you that distance Tarot is my specialty and private readings are available to order 24 / 7 no appointment needed. Email Tarot has loads of advantages for both of us, and there is a web page and blog post about that coming soon, too.
That being said, this is my three card pathway layout. I based it on the old ubiquitous past, present, future layout but it doesn’t work with exact time or with predictions. This about the collective energy environment, sort of a psychic weather report that helps you to figure out your best way forward through whatever life throws at you. Like I’ve said for years now: Tarot doesn’t tell you what is going to happen in life. Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
The layout is read from right to left, in the opposite direction of reading English. I do it that way for a couple of reasons. First, that’s just how I learned to do it a long, long time ago. It’s comfortable and it works. I think the part where we read cards in the opposite direction from reading words is important. Language and grammar is a logical process. When we flip the reading direction it disrupts that deeply ingrained logical thought pattern. That disruption helps to get past established mental habits and get to intuition a little bit easier.
The first card, the one on the right, symbolizes the energy that is fading. The middle card is the strongest energy around at the present moment. I’m writing this on a Monday morning – April 17, 2023 to be exact. Chances are, you are reading it at a different time. That’s where the customization comes in, even at a distance, even in a collective reading. In my experience, the inspiration we need is all around us. Whether you see it as psychic, spiritual, energetic or what have you, the message you need will find you one way or another and the moment you need it the most. Whenever you are reading this, the cards reflect your individual moment in time.
The left hand card is the energy that is growing in influence. Again, it is like an energy weather report of the vibe you might be dealing with later on. It is not a prediction of what is about to happen.
Another way to think of the layout is as the path we’ve already walked, the place where we stand now, and the path just ahead.
I tend not to use that metaphor because “path ahead” makes it too easy to fall into the trap of thinking in terms of predictions or some kind of archaic fortune telling. Tarot has evolved beyond that. If you are looking for someone to predict the future, I’m not the Tarot reader for you. I’m here for the personal growth, spiritual enrichment, inspiration and creative problem solving aspects of Tarot. I’m here to be a better person and better adapt to this squirrel rave we call life. Predictions can’t do regardless of whether they come true or not. But that’s another rant for another day.
My readings start with what I call the “general pattern.” That part isn’t as telling in these three card layouts as it is in a five or seven card layout. Here we see two minor arcana cards and one major. That is roughly the proportion of minor to major cards in the deck as a whole, so logically you would expect to see that same ratio in the layout. When that happens, I read it as “as expected” overall energy. No red lights, no sirens, no windfalls, no winning lottery tickets, just the normal, usual, average ups and downs of everyday living. In other words, chances are it is going to be a typical week, whatever is typical for you. The major arcana card is the growing energy position so the overall dynamics of the week will be building as time goes on as opposed to remaining steady or chilling out as we move toward the weekend. Things are on an upswing, which makes sense after the laid back energies of the past few weeks. It makes sense that the pendulum would finally start to swing in the other direction.
The fading energy is the Ten of Cups. Classically, the Ten of Cups is associated with all the happy family things you would expect based on the picture on the card. Cups cards are connected to the water element, emotions and our closest inner circle relationships. This isn’t to say that things are going to get unhappy or that you are going to lose the things that are dearest to you. In this case, it is the opposite. Words like “foundation” and “foundational” come to mind. Support systems, be it genetic family, found family or otherwise are very much there to support you.
I think this is the real cornerstone of this week’s reading.
The Ten of Cups reminds us that we have support. Know your foundation and your matrix. Before it was a movie or hair care line, matrix meant the environment something was in. Matrix is our milieu and the substrate of life. It’s glue. It’s the stuff that holds it all together.
Allow yourself to be supported. You are not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. There is a matrix and a life-glue out there for you. The trick is to find it and then to cherish it.
Current Energies are represented by the Eight of Pentacles. Pentacles are earth energy, career, wealth, and our relationship with the physical world. This is a cue that the conditions are right to be productive. Allow it to be easy. Just do it, as the shoe folks say. Stay busy. It has been said that work is good therapy. Focusing on a task can help you stay mindful and present in the current moment. That is exactly why simple, repetitive things like knitting, crafting, running, washing dishes or peeling potatoes can be meditative, even soothing, especially at times when emotions are running high. Again I hear “stay active” and “busy hands, quiet mind”
By the way, when I say “hear” it means that the intuitive information comes to mind in the form of words, sounds or songs. If I say “see” it means that the intuitive input is visual, coming through as mental images.
Finally we have the growing Hierophant energy. It took me a long time to come to terms with this card because of the religious imagery on older decks like the Marseille and the RWS card in the Youtube card draw video. That kind of imagery makes sense in the context of Tarot’s development in heavily Catholic Medieval Europe but it has little meaning for those of us who are not part of the Christian religious tradition. Depending on individual experiences, the religious aspects of the card’s appearance can be off-putting to say the least. It is thanks to Johanne Denelli’s writing and the Mark Evans artwork in the Witches Tarot deck version of the card that I’ve been able to work with the card at all. The Hierophant is the keeper of traditions. The hierophant tells old legends by firelight, and defines social expectation – even when social expectations evolve and change.
There are two threads of meaning for the card, and both apply in this reading.
First the Hierophant can symbolize tradition.
In this case it is calling us to set our new normal. Now it is our turn to say what is or isn’t traditional and if we choose to follow tradition at all or not. As someone on social media put it, we are the new ancestors.
After times of great change like the pandemic, people need some degree of sameness, some sense of a solid foundation. Whether it is based on old tradition, or the creation of a new one, after times of great change like the pandemic, we naturally gravitate toward things that are solid, and seem unlikely to change anytime soon. When you build a house, the foundation is the place to start. It might be a new building on a new foundation. It might be rebuilding on an old and proven foundation. Here again we are asked to find our matrix. What is our root, our cornerstone and our foundation? What is the glue that holds the whole thing together? What holds all of our parts in place? What is our matrix?
The other thread of meaning in this card has to do with social convention. It is about doing what is expected of us – or not. I relate this very much with that tension between expressing our true selves fully and authentically and the public face we put on in order to thrive, succeed, or at least survive in the society in which we live. Sometimes you have to take off your favorite goth band T-shirt and dress for a job interview. Sometimes you have to stake your claim for who you really are to heck with the cultural norms. Sometimes you can find a way to have both. Sometimes you have to stay closeted for your own safety. Sometimes you have to find new family and culture and walk your own path.
The message from the Hierophant is to know and define which path is best for you right now. Whether you are complying with the old or creating something new, do it knowingly, mindfully and deliberately.
In a private reading, I would finish up with a summary of any purely psychic intuitive impressions that come through. It may be related to the person’s cards or questions or it may not. That part is highly individual and very personal. It’s not really applicable to a general, collective reading like this. I do get the mental image of a lotus, if that means anything to anyone. That morphs into the image of a pine forest, along with the scent of pine. I’m guessing that’s our recommended candle or incense fragrance for the day.
And there the energies step back and here is where I would end things if I were reading for an individual.
For the whole group of you – thank you for reading and listening. Helpful links are in the text, in the right hand column, in the episode description. You know the drill.
Thank you again. Have a great week and I’ll see you at the next sip!
It has been said that a wise person is like a mirror, holding no opinion, teaching only by reflecting things as they are.
Tarot is like that.
Tarot is an amplifier for our own innate, natural intuition just like the shiny surface behind the light bulb makes a flashlight seem brighter. The eyes are said to be a mirror of the soul. Tarot is a mirror that lets us look ourselves right in the eye, right in the soul. That can be a terrifying thing. Or it can be the ultimate liberation allowing us to see and therefore become our most genuine self.
That is the power of Tarot.
Sure, the prediction thing is all fun and giggles and a great storytelling device for books, movies and TV but the real power in Tarot lies in its ability to hold up a mirror to who we are and give us a hint about how to help that person in the mirror be a little better and live a little happier.
Everyone is at least a little bit afraid of the unknown.
If you don’t know what to expect from a reading and all you know of Tarot is poltergeist movies and religious hysteria, something would be wrong if you DIDN’T worry about Tarot being evil. No one wants doors slamming, knives flying around the kitchen or red eyes growling in the night. No matter how good a mirror may be, it can’t reflect light that isn’t there. Setting clear, strong, positive intentions is the thing that turns on the light and puts some safety rails around the whole thing. Clear, positive intentions and shining your own inner light will spare you from gut twisting dread when cards like the Devil or the ten of swords show up.
The Devil and all of the other ominous looking cards are important, but they aren’t evil. They are part of the mirror. Dark, uncomfortable, frightening, terrible things are necessary in the deck to accurately reflect life on Earth which has dark, uncomfortable, frightening, terrible things in it.
Mirrors don’t come with background removal software.
Let’s be very clear: when dark or frightening cards turn up in a reading for you, it doesn’t mean that YOU are evil or doing something wrong. It doesn’t mean that someone you know has done something wrong or is out to get you. Tarot readings aren’t always that personal. Sometimes they reflect the human condition in which we all live. A mirror shows you looking into it but it also shows what is behind you and around you. Like the mirrors in a car show the traffic around you and help to reduce your blind spots, the cards show the energy around you. Knowing the energy environment can help you to adapt and thrive even in the middle of life’s biggest gnarliness.
Mirrors don’t come with special effect filters. They show you life as it is, not sprinkle pixie dust on it just to make you feel better. The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists and exactly what it realistically is. Good Tarot points out problems and suggests possible solutions.
The best Tarot does all of that with kindness.
Common courtesy and business transparency, with a generous helping of compassion while still telling hard truths are hallmarks of a genuine psychic or a skilled Tarot reader. If you are worried about Tarot being evil but still want to give it a try, it is all the more important that you find a trustworthy reader that makes you feel at ease without sugar coating everything.
I have some more thoughts about finding a psychic you can trust on the blog website. A link is in the episode description for podcast listeners. To help decrease the fear of the unknown by eliminating the unknown about my readings, the free ebook Tarot Portfolio is available for instant download in my ko-fi shop. There’s a link for that too.
Thanks so much for reading and listening. If you like Q & A posts like this, send some questions to be answered! You can use the AMA form on the website, use the blog comments, ko-fi DMs or the email contact listed on the website. If you like any of this Tarot content, virtual coffee and membership on ko-fi supports the creation of this free blog and podcast.
Sometimes the best way to is through – don’t give up!sag
In his classic science fiction novel, Dune, Frank Herbert famously wrote
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast. I don’t have much to add to Frank Herbert’s famous quote because that essentially sums up the reading for this week.
That, and I also intuitively hear that “the best way around is through.”
The quiet, introspective, introverted, wait, watch, listen energy from last couple of weeks is still lingering for the collective zeitgeist if you are reading or listening to this close to the time when its posted. If you are coming across this at a later time, The Queen of Cups is validating any emotional fatigue or philosophical, thinking, introspective feelings you may have experienced recently. The 1909 Pamela Smith artwork we see in today’s card draw video shows the queen of cups near water, gazing into a cup. Sometimes that has intuition connections and you might resonate with the idea of fortune telling. The stories of Nostradamus gazing into a bowl of water to make his predictions come to mind. I don’t know if that was an inspiration for the artist or not. My sense is that the connection for this week is to the idea of water representing the depths of the human psyche and the queen is gazing to understand deep emotions and subconscious motives more than some superficial, shallow movie style prediction.
This energy is in the fading position, so the time is coming soon when we need to ease up on plumbing our psychological and emotional depths. Knock it off with the emo for a little bit. We need to go heads up and eyes open for a little bit.
There is a certain practicality to the Devil Card. This week it is asking us to take up the terrifying task of staring reality in the eye. There are things in this world we can’t control. There are terrible people making terrible decisions. Malicious intent exists. Putting it on the line to stand up for yourself and stand up for what is right is a fearful thing.
Which takes us back to the Litany Against Fear. Sometimes the only way around is through.
Here I am reminded of a scene from the pulp fiction based 1985 movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Granted, we aren’t talking about super brainy high class cinema here, but it is a fun movie. One of my favorite parts is where Chun, the martial arts master tells student Remo “Fear is just a feeling. You feel hot. You feel hungry. You feel angry. You feel afraid. Fear can never kill you.”
Which also reminds us of the very real life quote from President Franklin Roosevelt that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.“
Whenever we confront external danger we are confronting our own fear as well.
Sometimes the demons we most need to slay are the internal ones.
Only then are we free to begin and begin and begin again if we need to do that. The Fool reminds us that we can begin again as many times as we need. Moment by moment if necessary. Sometimes the only way to that new moment is through the fear we feel in this one.
Thank you so much for reading and listening!
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If Einstein said it…then it must be true, right? I don’t know if the attribution is correct, but if it is a feel validated. We’ve been getting this exact kind of message from the Two of Pentacles for ages.
That sort of dynamic equilibrium – be it molecules across a permeable membrane, a clown on a unicycle, or an Austrian physicist on a bicycle, movement is a part of balance just like change is part of life.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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