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.
Keep your eyes on the road because you drive where you look.
Hi and welcome to Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast where we take a Tarot look at the week ahead in the time it takes to sip your coffee. Or Tea. Or adult beverage. Or whatever it happens to be that you are sipping whatever time of day you happen to see this. No matter what is on the menu, I’m happy you are here. Let’s look at some cards, once again drawing from the Alleyman’s Tarot, used with the permission of deck creator Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC.
If you are reading on the blog, you already know this. If you are listening on the podcast, when you get a chance, take a peek at the blog or at the Sage Words Tarot YouTube channel. There is a companion video posted that shows the real world card draw for today’s collective energy reading. It’s real. It’s me. This is exactly what it would look like if we did an in-person reading together, just like the email readings I do are a written transcript of exactly what I would say to you in a live reading.
Actually no, I take that back. It would be better than live. That’s why I love this text to voice setup between WordPress and Spotify for podcasters. I am so much better as a writer than I am as a social media presenter. You are getting something next level when I can use a keyboard and get into writer mode. It’s a little like the old school Batman comics. Letting me use a keyboard to communicate is like using the big red direct line Bat Phone in the police commissioner’s office. Writing and typing for me is a direct hotline right to intuition. But that is all stuff you can read on the blog.
Let’s look at the cards for this week.
The “wait” energy is lessening, but it is still not time to start or run. The introvert vibe has not quite yet swung in the opposite direction. Don’t worry. It will. It always does. We’ll be back on the Be Strong! Persist! You got this! bandwagon soon enough.
For now – we’ve persisted. We’ve done the thing. We’ve made it through the 2020s decade so far. The worst may be over for the moment, but we are probably feeling worse for the wear it took to get to this moment.
The cards today are the “wound man” as fading energy, the Queen of Ravens as current energies, and the Seven of Cups as the growing energies.
The “Wound Man” card feels like the 10 of swords and the nine of wands rolled into one.
This time, this week, is less about assigning blame and more about understanding and solving the problems at hand.
In internal martial arts like Tai Chi from China, it is thought that energy flow is directed by our sight and attention. Looking where you want to place power not only helps bring the head and body posture into alignment, but it also leads the chi, the life energy where it needs to be.
It’s just like drivers education classes long ago in the dark before times. We were told to keep our eyes on the road because where you look is where you steer and that’s where the car goes. Attention is crucial, so we can add the Chariot card energy into the mix today too. The Wound Man card is bringing in elements of the nine of wands, the ten of swords through their connection with woundedness and
For physical wounds to heal, there has to be enough blood flow. Blood flow and the chi life energy go hand in hand. Healing needs attention. Neglected wounds are at risk of infection. That fits with both our modern scientific understanding of infections and with the notion of healing energy flowing with our attention. This is put into practice energy wellness systems like Reiki, acupuncture, acupressure and Reiki.
All of that, every physical bit of it is outside of the realm of Tarot. Emotional wounds, however is right in Tarot’s wheelhouse. Here I am very much reminded of the quote from psychologist Carl Jung who said that “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
It may not be long term psychotherapy, but Tarot can be part of the wound cleaning and fresh bandages for emotional injury. It helps to narrow our focus or broaden our understanding. When we are unseen or invalidated or demeaned by others or suppress or neglect our own feelings, problems can turn up just as certainly as allowing a physical wound to fester – as nineteenth century as that sounds.
The wound man reminds us that accidents can happen or we can caught in the crossfire of cruelty. But then what?
The Queen of Ravens is akin to the Judgement card without the religious overtones. There is also a sprinkle of the Seven of Pentacles with a reaping what you sow quality. There is a sense of quick and dispassionate karma. What you give reflects back to you quickly. I hear “choose”
The next bit is hard to put into words. It feels akin to “Treat your own wounds with kindness.” and “Allow the Raven Queen, punishment isn’t yours to give this time.” A richly colored natural sunstone comes to mind, with the sense that the Queen of Ravens is protective in the same way, reflecting ill intent back to the source, and providing a warm protected bubble for you to tend your wounds and begin to heal.
Finally the growing energy is the Seven of Cups, the card of abundant options. Often this card is a caution against dithering or overthinking. Sometimes this card is advice to, when all logical things seem equal, to follow your intuition. Today I hear “growing hope” and a connection with last weeks “wait” message, as if to say more options are coming. Be hopeful, and wait for the right thing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but don’t let the good be the enemy of the better simply because of an inattentive lack of patience.
And there the energies step back.
Thank you all for reading and listening today. The whole thing turned out to be a little more ponderous and heavy than I expected. It will be interesting to see if there are any other big shifts when we look at the collective energy next Monday. I hope you will meet me here to find out how things feel then.
Have a great week and I’ll see you at the next sip!
When vastly different people from widely separate places separated by large gaps of time come to kind of the same conclusion, I tend to slap a “true” label on that conclusion.
To my way of thinking, the circles that contain Taoism and solitary eclectic witchcraft overlap a lot. Not quite one big circle kind of overlap, but close.
I would also throw Buddhism into that mix, especially the Zen/Ch’an variety. Jim Martin’s meditation newsletter on substack Hustle & Meditate recently reminded me of that particular mix-in.
I love a good echo chamber (whose ego doesn’t?) “The Unusual Buddha” as he is known around social media reminded me of some of my favorite ideas. I’d encourage you to read his newsletter about “Wisdom In Unusual Places.”
The beautiful part of it all is that none of it is elitist.
There is no dogma saying that you have to believe X or do Y to be a part of this, or identify as one of us. In Taoism, everything is part of everything. If it exists in the cosmos it counts. For the cosmos to BE the cosmos it must, by definition, include everything. If it is writing about Taoism, it is a part of the canon of writing about Taoism.
If you are an eclectic witch, whatever practices and philosophies you choose to embrace are part of Magick because (despite was various gatekeepers with a dogmatic bent will tell you) your personal magickal practices and beliefs are all part of the great big oneness of everything too.
And so it is with the path of the Buddha. The path to enlightenment that Siddhartha carved was his own, yet it was as valid as any of anyone throughout the totality of space and time. The old master’s path existed with full validity and personal truth within the cosmic wholeness, Siddhartha’s path existed with full validity and personal truth within the cosmic wholeness. So does mine – and YOURS.
Or, as Mr. Martin put it:
“The Buddha, become Enlightened in his own time using his own sword and shield, as it were, and not those of his former masters…It was only after setting down the tools of those who came before that Siddhartha Gautama, the fully realized Buddha, was left unencumbered enough to reach the goal of total Enlightenment….It is my sincere opinion that our practice is not for another to dictate…The teacher can only show the way. The task, however, is ours to complete.”
In a few paragraphs he summed up what took me years to wrangle out in the old blog.
Magickal writing and thought has been top of mind for me lately. I can’t remember if it was Mat Auryn or Marshall of Southern Bramble podcast but one of them put a brilliant explanation of “mystery” teachings within the occult traditions. I forget the exact quote, but my understanding was that the mystic is hidden and sacred NOT because only a guarded and gate-kept select few is permitted to access it, but rather because it can never be taught at all. True gnostic learning has to be first hand. Magickal learning must be experienced for oneself, just as Siddhartha sat under a tree alone with his enlightenment, just as we must each see the moon for ourselves with our own eyes, as Bruce Lee, who was known for his Taoist influences, reminds us in Enter the Dragon.
“It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory!”
Sure, Bruce Lee was influenced by Taoism. Taoism is ancient and found much in common with Buddhism when it came to town. The two blended into the Ch’an offshoot of Buddhism, which fell asleep on a fishing boat and woke up as Zen in Japan like Mr. Miyagi’s Karate Kid ancestor.
Old celtic, appalachian and other magick is not known for reading Eastern philosophy or watching Kung Fu movies. With the advent of the Internet anything anywhere can influence anything anywhere else so the historic context is helpful. Look to the pre-internet roots of a thing. Read books, subscribe to blogs, listen to podcasts about a wide variety of things. Look for wisdom in the usual places and in the unusual ones too, but pay particular attention to the places where there is unexpected overlap. Those nifty spaces are liminal and lovely and powerful where we can look and see the mysteries for ourselves.
Happy Weekend!
This is an updated version of a blog post I wrote last year for the Stuff blog that is newly re-named too. Stuff now “Sage’s Other Words” which is the overflow blog where I’ll be posting anything that isn’t about Tarot & Tarot readings.
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Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Today’s card is the Seven of Bells, from a woodcut print for a deck of sixteenth century playing cards by German artist Peter Flotner. This particular card is part of the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck, used with permission of Publishing Goblin LLC
On seeing the card, my impression was a clear, urgent single word.
Wait.
In all fairness, it is Wednesday morning as I write this and you could chalk this whole thing up to a rampaging case of the mid-week blahs. In fact that might be the whole point of it. A case of the midweek blahs might be a message to wait, to indulge in some stillness. If you ever feel hugely UNmotivated, listen to that feeling. Understand it and adjust accordingly.
This very much feels like a continuation of the energy from our week-ahead reading two days ago. It’s still an introvert’s energy paradise, but I’m getting a small sense of how an extrovert might be feeling a little restless today.
Still, I feel like the message is crisp, clear and succinct. It feels like a command to stop, be still, and wait. It feels almost like a being held still or caught in a science fiction tractor beam or force field. I hear the phrase “enforced stasis” Lots of science and science fiction words and images are coming through today.
Now I get the mental image of an old school mario video game. I don’t know if you have ever played a video game with those swinging or jumping obstacles. Running flat out at full speed will get you knocked down every time. The trick is to wait. You have to make your run in short bursts or to time the jumps just right.
Have you ever heard of psycho neuro immunology? Is that still a thing? It was in vogue back in the 80s during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Basically it is modern scientific medicine finally taking a side eye look at the ancient mind body connection and who would have guessed – lo, and behold! Stress impacts your health and can legit affect immunity. Shocker, eh? By measuring T cells and cortisols and all sorts of technical stuff that I can’t remember , mainstream medicine figured out a thing that holistic wisdom has known all along: if you don’t get rest on your own when you need it, Mother Nature will step in and make you rest through a cold, or flu or something. Go down for a nap or be taken down for a week. Taking care of yourself mentally and physically isn’t going to 100% prevent or cure infectious diseases, especially not very serious illnesses like AIDS or Covid, but it can help your immune system do its thing when minor things come along.
So wait.
Stop.
Be still.
Listen.
I’m taking this one personally. It has been a busy couple of months here in the cyberspace as TaoCraft Tarot was renamed to Sage Words Tarot, I finished & uploaded TaoCraft Portfolio (the free behind the scenes ebook) and the Tarot Table subscription blog was changed, updated and changed again. It is seriously time to stop mucking around with all of this. I hope you’ll visit the links in the podcast episode description or browse the blog website or browse the ko-fi page. Comments are open on the blog and DMs are open to supporters on ko-fi. I really hope that you’ll take a look and tell me the features you like, don’t like and what you would like to see in the future. I’m listening.
I think that may be part of the “pause” or “wait” energy that is coming through this week. Listening is part of the stillness and quiet. You can’t listen to other people when you are chattering nonstop. I have things situated so that it suits my needs. It has come to the point of simply letting you know what I have to offer and if it resonates with you then great! Let’s get to work! But if it doesn’t, no worries. There are a lot of us sincere, trustworthy psychics out here – someone is bound to match your vibe. You keep looking for what you need. And as the seven of bells suggests, I’ll keep listening for what is needed.
The figure on the card seems to be made of wood, like Marvel’s Groot surrounded by jingle bells, or maybe Treebeard from Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings or the Tree people of Cheem from Doctor Who – only centuries before any of those characters were created. Actual trees that aren’t science fiction humanoids are living beings, after all.
Listen to the wind in the trees. They may be listening back.
Seven Dane Asmund, the Alleyman’s Tarot creator connected this card to change – both changing to meet the needs of others AND more importantly reminding us that we can change back to our true selves.
Here I am reminded of the Face Dancers from the original Dune book series by Frank Herbert. Face Dancers were shape shifting assassins who could take on any person’s appearance and never showed their true form while on assignment. Take out the assassin part and we all do a little bit of behavioral face dancing. To one extent or another we adapt our language and behavior to the situation. I think the connection to the card comes from the idea of a strong inner core. Like an oak tree or towering pine, our authentic self can remain still, quiet, and strong no matter how our branches sway in the wind. Still, quiet and strong, our true selves wait for us to return no matter how our outer social face dances.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. See you at the next sip!
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In this Pathway through week Tarot reading, introverts and extroverts are two sides of the same important energy.
With an emphasis on individualism and alone time, this week’s energy is an introvert’s paradise. Extroverts might have a tougher time ahead and need to go out of their way to stay and feel connected.
Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Podcast where you get Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
I’m Sage and I’m glad you are here. Thank you all for reading and listening. Personally, I’m thrilled for this kind of energy to come along. After changing the blog and podcast name and all of the re-arranging and updating that’s been going on since the new year began, I’m glad for a little low key time to recharge the batteries a little bit. I hope the respite is as welcome for you.
The cards are less chatty this week and the intuition is back to the typical visuals. First thing that comes to mind is a map of the US with no state lines on it, just an outline with red and blue dots on it, like a new graphic of some sort. I’m not sure exactly what else the visual might be trying to say, but my hunch is that it is pointing to individuality, like the individual dots. It’s a strange way to think about it, but that meme that has been so popular with Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal seems to have planted a seed with the music. The lyrics “Make your own kind of music, sing your own special song” may have planted themselves deeper in our social media loving psyche than we realized.
Unless you accept and include the diversity of everyone else on the planet, in your individuality you will walk alone.
For some alone time is a treasure, that allows us to rest from the drains and demands of life.
For others it is suffocating, isolation from the collective energy on which they thrive.
The energy this week is asking two things of us.
First is to know our own source of strength. If you are the type to need a little down time away from other people in order to rechard, that quiet is essential this week. If you thrive on unplugging for a while, then by all means do that. This isn’t the week to push outside your comfort zone. This is the week to build and protect and strengthen your comfort zone. By the same token, if you thrive on connection, this is the week to ensure that connection for yourself, yes, but also as a kindness to others who might be feeling over-isolated.
Second is to protect your energy. If your energy comes from connection, focus on those in particular. Protect your connection to groups and other individuals. The quality of connection is the important thing. Heath is the emphasis in both directions of the connection. Make sure your relationships and connections are healthy and not dependent or narcissistic or draining.
For those who thrive on disconnecting, do that. Protect your energy in total. Shields up, let it go. My go to reading recommendation when this energy comes along is Psychic Protection by Ted Andrews. That, and his earlier book The Healer’s Manual are two of the most useful books I’ve ever read. Taking care to guard and protect your energy feels especially important for the introverts among us.
Whatever your energy style – no matter whether you thrive on making connections or disconnecting, no matter whether you thrive on a rave or listing to rave music alone, whatever your recharging style may be – honor that style. Protect that energy because that will help you have the clarity to see your way through the path ahead. There is so much potential, so many choices and options for you if you let yourself be true to yourself.
Imagine this. Imagine a hall of mirrors where the reflections in the reflections seem to go on forever. Now imagine a crowd of people all dressed alike in that hall of mirrors. How do you see your way forward if you force yourself to be like everyone else? With that image we go from introvert paradise to introvert hell. That’s why the be true to yourself part is important. It is one good way to find your way forward in a dizzying array of energies and possibilities.
Here I get a sense of this crowded mirror room requiring us to adopt an attitude of radical and fierce compassion for others, for diversity and inclusion. There is room and reflections and possible paths for us all.
That’s the purely intuitive read of these cards that are from The Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC who graciously gave me permission to use the deck in my blog and social media.
The cards today are not traditional Tarot cards, which gives a sort of ‘time out of time’ or ‘time apart from the rest’ feeling.
The first card, the Hole is by Seven Dane Asmund, I’m guessing created for the Alleyman’s deck.
It speaks to the unspoken, the deduced and implicit. It highlights the missing. It is, as I see it, the arrow pointing to the things that are conspicuous in the absence.
There is a scene in one of the Star Wars movies where Qui Gon is was told of a planet, but can’t find it. So Yoda (and his class of younglings) pull up the star system where the mystery planet was supposed to be, but nothing was where the planet was supposed to be. What WAS there were aberrations and irregularities. The planets that were on the moving 3D map were moving as if a planet was there. They found the missing, or actually erased, planet by the evidence left behind where it was not. Qui gon proved the theory true by going there, to the place where the planet was calculated to be based on the movement of other things around the empty space.
As convoluted as that sounds, that is exactly the plane Neptune was discovered in our own star (solar) system.
Uranus was wobbling weird so scientists used Newton’s laws of gravity to calculate where another planet should be based on how Uranus was moving around space we thought was empty. We couldn’t go there yet, so they looked at the spot through a telescope instead and BOOM – hello Neptune. (source nasa.gov)
And such is the power of the empty, the hole, the alone. Introverts thrive on it. Extroverts need a little sip of it every now and then.
The Hole and The Comforter are less fading and current energies so much as they are opposite sides of the same, equally strong current energy. I don’t get the sense either is going to fade either time soon. Again I get the feeling the major message is to know which side of things is best for you and do that. Do that big time.
The comforter is all about the power of connection, of comforting ourselves through connection and the comfort of helping others through our connection with them. This card is urging us to celebrate and cherish, protect and strengthen all of the healthy connections in life or forge new ones if needed. This card was originally created by Natasa Ilincic for the Compendium of Witches Tarot.
The creator of the Thing among Reflections card is supposedly unknown, although I suspect it is the deck creator’s work. He reads the card as a vaguely disconcerted feeling that something is wrong or off. This card hasn’t turned up very often for me so this being a new (to me) card gives it that exact feeling just from its unfamiliarity. It feels more than the embarrassment of riches feeling that the many choices we see in the seven of cups card. This is about so many potential outcomes that it is disorienting and overwhelming. If the seven of cups is a big restaurant menu level of many choices, this card is multiverse, hot dogs for fingers, Everything Everywhere All At Once level of many choices.
Knowing yourself, being yourself, and knowing the best way to protect and recharge your energy will help us through a hall of mirrors if and when we walk through one.
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Thank you so much for reading and listening! See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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