Tarot Cards – Page 46 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice First & Foundation

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I’m not going to get into the weeds of this as a reading just yet.

Let’s talk about circles and foundations first.

I think the things we’ve learned by studying the Oracle Dice points to something both bigger and deeper. This whole exercise has shown us a little bit about first principles and foundations.

Next week, I’ll just do a full on reading with our seven learning dice and that will wrap this particular post series. It has come full circle and not only have we learned about the oracle dice, but we’ve had a behind the scenes peek at one way to learn any oracle.

Learn almost any skill, really.

I used to teach martial arts, mostly Tai Chi (taijiquan)

Stance work – how you place your feet and distribute your weight – is important. If you don’t have a good physical foundation all that punching and kicking isn’t going to help a whole lot. Another layer beneath that foundation is basic conditioning. You can’t have a strong stance foundation if you don’t have at least some degree of physical fitness. That’s where repetition, and some sort of methodical practice comes in. Basic weight training, stretching, muscle building exercises all make for a better stance foundation. Better stance foundation makes better practice. Better practice makes higher level martial arts skill which opens insight into the mental and spiritual aspects of the discipline which leads us back to understanding how important basics and foundations are. You start at the surface and get deeper to find the foundation bedrock upon which you build your way right back up to the surface.

And so the circle goes.

My Sifu always said the best way to train for a thing is to do a thing. That applies to intuition development as well as physical training.

We started with basics – the meaning of individual symbols. Then we expanded that to the whole-dice meaning supplemented by the Lord Cards. Now we’ve expanded into the realm of doing a reading – on the background foundation of the reading cloth.

All along we’ve drawn parallels between the oracle dice and Tarot. To my way of thinking that shows that the REAL oracle here is our innate, natural human intuition and psychic perception. All the oracles in the world are just amplifiers that help us to access, expand, understand, and communicate that psychic perception – but that’s a discussion for another day.

In Tarot, the layout is the foundation of the reading. But at the same time it adds complexity and difficulty to the reading.

For the Oracle Dice, the reading cloth or the plain table, or whatever background you choose is as essential to the dice reading as the layout is to a Tarot reading. In my experience, it is crucial to know your layout and what each layout position symbolizes before you start a reading, before you even pick up your card deck.

Same here. You literally can’t throw the dice without a chosen background. It is the foundation and the context. You layer the reading down from the individual symbol to the die to the die’s position on the reading background both individually and relative to the other dice. The reading cloth background is both the beginning foundation and the deepest layer of understanding.

It’s all very up and down all at the same time, as above so below, dynamic but unified sort of stuff.

Multi-dice readings, like multi-card Tarot layouts, is a black belt move. Reading for yourself is hard enough. Reading for others in that format is master teacher level stuff.

Anyone can reach that level with time and effort, but it isn’t necessarily easy. At the same time, reading a single side or card for yourself is easy as breathing. I teach one card daily meditation Tarot in my ebook PeaceTarot and would recommend the same technique for the oracle dice if you are new to intuitive readings. Start with a single dice roll for daily meditation and then gradually add the layers of meaning as we have in this series.

Of course if you feel it’s right for you – let’s roll! You are the only one who knows when you are reading to progress through the steps. Only you know your relationship with your own intuition.

Next time – let’s read these things.

See you at the next sip!

* Publishing Goblin Oracle Dice used with permission from Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC

Still Flowing

Tarot energies for the week ahead

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Tarot isn’t about time, and collective spirit energy doesn’t’ flow in a straight line.

I’ve said it dozens of times, and I’ll say it again: Tarot isn’t about telling you what will happen in life: Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.

Right now life is happening in a very deliberate, circumspect way. If you feel stressed, or if you feel like you are getting slammed by life right now then one of two things is going on. Either this simply isn’t the reading for you and your guidance lies elsewhere OR the things that are happening are happening for some reason. The stressing and slamming has to happen to get you where you want (or more likely need) to go, be it physically, mentally or emotionally.

For those who feel like things are stuck or stagnant – don’t worry, the shift is still shifting, the flow is still flowing at the speed that needs to happen, not at the speed we want it to happen.

Here I am given the mental image of the Mississippi river at New Orleans again. It is a big river. It is wide, it is deep. It seems still. But stand on her shore and a mind boggling amount of water moves by you every minute. That is today’s energy. Seemingly quiet, but deep and powerful nonetheless.

And this energy isn’t going anywhere any time soon it seems. Two cards repeat from last week. In all of the time I’ve been doing these monthly (more recently weekly) three card readings I can only think of once or twice that ONE card would repeat from one reading to the next. Two repeating cards is remarkable.

This energy wants to be heard. And its willing to sit with us and abide with us until the time is right for it to move on. Take your time. Spirit will take time for you.

Abide.

Abide keeps coming through. Be patient with yourself, be patient with nature and circumstance and time. Be kind to the moment. Be kind to those around you. Be kind to yourself.

Abide.

Abide this pace of things. Fast flows and turbulence will return soon enough. Neil DeGrasse Tyson famously said that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Neither is under any obligation to meet your expectations or your schedule. The big river flows at its own pace. Flow with it, it will carry you effortlessly. Or stay on the shore, and wait for the next boat or bridge. It is up to you.

The fading energy, the queen of swords, doesn’t mean that your power is fading. It is simply stepping back from the forefront of your attention. True strength doesn’t need to be the center of attention. The Queen of Swords is about stepping up, stepping into and accepting your power.

Ok, you are powerful. So now what? Accepting time is over. Now that it is yours, it is time to begin using it. It is time to begin LIVING it

Which is why we are surrounded by the Three of Pentacles energy. Three of Pentacles is being part of a team or guild, of work. It is about success through work. Contribute. Support your team, they have supported you. Claiming your power within your own mind is great, but it has to be used, applied, and lived in order to become a real, solid, integrated part of you.

The Moon and its changes are still with us albeit with a different looking card. There are multiples of several cards within the Alleyman’s deck. The slack water of last week’s reading is just beginning to slowly, slowly tip in the other direction. Ebbs will flow and vice versa, but again in its own time in its own way.

“The message stands.” You can read about last week’s moon and three of pentacles energy HERE.

And there the energy steps back.

Thank you so much for reading! Next up, “Learn with me: oracle dice” returns Wednesday.

See you at the next sip!

It isn’t fine – and it isn’t fear.

It’s a meme.

We’ve probably all seen it by now. NPR cites K.C. Green as the creator of the famous “This is fine.” dog. We’ve all witnessed epic levels of denial, coated in metric tons of cognitive and emotional dissonance in the public space over the 10 years since this famous web comic was created.

It isn’t fine.

I’ll leave my void-screaming political views for Threads. For now, I want to stay in my lane and talk about my area of expertise, Tarot.

I think the trick to surviving social media is much like life: look for the big picture, and don’t take it all quite so personally. Curate your space. With that little bit of a step back, social media feels less like being a wide-eyed ingenue in the middle of a conflagration and more like an endless source of writing and art prompts.

Here is today’s thought-provoking juxtaposition.

One Tarot reader offered a breathy, pink chakra, love-and-light video about avoiding scams and finding breathy, heart-filled, pink chakra, love-and-light psychics.

Not my style – but a legit point. There really are bad people who have done bad things under the guise of psychics and Tarot and they have made this work a minefield of problems for the rest of us, whether we are annoyingly toxic positive or otherwise.

The problem here is the way they offered themselves up as the solution to the problem they were fussed up about.

Another reader has a dissenting view. Their thought that these kind of “how to find a good psychic” posts are little more than fear-mongering.

True, but incomplete.

When you caution people about real dangers you have to take great care to offer real solutions that work across the board – not just offer up yourself as the sole solution. If you put yourself out there as the only solution, then you are the scam you are warning about.

As a professional, a genuine high-level psychic reader has an obligation to take on difficult subjects for the sake of the clients we all wish to serve. That includes fear mongers. That includes scams. That includes taking on the subject of finding a trustworthy psychic in this crazy-pants world of “spiritual businesses.”

If we don’t talk about scams and impersonators and the very real pitfalls of finding a psychic we fail to serve the best interests of our clients – and ourselves. If we DO talk about scams and impersonators, to some extent we are engaging in the exact fear mongering that we are warning against.

This business is as fraught for an ethical psychic as it is for the person looking for them.

The best solution I can offer is a middle way where we take on the touch topics but hopefully avoid any problematic narcissism. As always, I take inspiration from Taoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism. In this case, Dharma Drum Mountain says it best:

Face it : face the difficulty squarely
Accept it : accept the reality of the difficulty
Deal with it : deal with the difficulty with wisdom and compassion
Let it go : afterwards, let go of it

Let’s apply this to the issue at hand.

The difficulty is that crime exists. Psychic scams have been around as long as psychics and scammers. Those crimes has made life much worse for authentic psychics and their clients, both.

No amount of breathy woo woo or stalwart avoidance of fear mongering is going to help. Being a psychic and finding a trustworthy psychic is fraught with real, legitimate problems.

The best solutions I can think of are drawn from the non-psychic, non-spiritual realm: Transparent communication.

Get a recommendation from someone you trust, just like you would for a plumber or a hairdresser.
Be careful when reading third party reviews. Some reviews are scams in themselves containing websites and phone numbers unrelated to the psychic they are ‘reviewing.’ That is a reflection of the reviewer – not the business)
Follow your instincts. If you feel pressured, walk away. A psychic is not an emergency room. You have every right to take the time you need to find the right reading for you.
Don’t trust any psychic that targets you INDIVIDUALLY for a reading. Would you trust spam, email phishing or a stalker? Discounts, giveaways, or sales offered to the GENERAL PUBLIC are normal practices for any business. If you approach the psychic, that is one thing. If the psychic approaches you that is entirely and disturbingly different.
Look at websites, blogs, social media and advertising to get some sense of their personality. If you think they are a good match for you, talk or email with them BUT be sure to keep it neutral and professional yourself. Ask about normal business related things like hours, appointments, prices, refunds, and so on. Don’t pour your heart out to a stranger or interrogate them like a criminal. If they are open, patient and professional with your average business questions, chances are they will treat your reading with the same respect. High pressure sales, demanding a set number of sessions, promising a specific result, or blaming you for any outcome are all warning signs. If something feels off, trust those feelings.

The letting go step is the hardest part and perhaps the most dangerous point in all of this. YOU are the expert in how you feel. If you try a psychic and it doesn’t work out, by all means walk away and find someone else. With the internet, you have a world of psychics and Tarot readers to choose from. You should never feel pressured into getting more sessions or paying more money. You never have to see a psychic again if you don’t want to. You are the one who must decide if and when you get your next reading.

If you would like to read how I do things, you can download the ebooklet TaoCraft Portfolio HERE for free.

Follow your instincts. We professionals are spirit translators and intuition amplifiers – not ultimate answers.

Follow your instincts. If they lead you to a reading with me, great! Let’s get to work. If not, great! That means you are honoring your path even as I honor mine in writing this.

And that is a fearless, daring thing for us all.

How Tarot Still Works

Behind the scenes peek: what Tarot *really* does for you.

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Lightly edited reprise from Thanksgiving season last year:

You are just perfectly enough just exactly as you are.

Right here. Right now. You already are all you need to be in this moment. Take a deep breath. Are you in any real danger right this very second? If you are, what in the living heck are you doing reading a blog? Take care of yourself for goodness sake!

But if you are reading this, chances are things are OK enough to allow for a little screen time. Even if things are fantastic, take a little time off from that emotional energy and let the time it takes to read this be a bubble of emotional rest for you.

Today’s card is the King of Cups, in reverse. Like we’ve talked about before, I read inversions pretty much the same as upright cards, taking all of the keywords and meanings into consideration all of the time anyway. If the card turns over upside down relative to the person doing the reading, or “reversed” as we call it, it looks right side up to a person on the other side of the table. In three dimensional space, a card can be upright or reversed literally depending on your point of view. Considering the big picture is key in this kind of work. Abstractions, ideas, archetypes, and intuitive nudges all make a tiny bit more sense when you keep it all in perspective in mind during the whole card reading process. When you think big picture, the orientation of the card on the table matters less.

In any reading, public collective or private, a reversal speaks more to the position in the layout than the individual card. Layout position plus a reversed card is a clue to an area of life that may be conflicted, slowed, problematic or blocked. In a one card reading, a reversal can mean a broadly applicable slowing or turbulence in the person’s energies or in the collective, zeitgeist energy

Or not.

Freud once said that “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sometimes a reversed card is just a random happenstance from shuffling the deck.

Except today. Today the King of Cups came up reversed and it feels like it means it.

The reversed King of Cups is about emotional maturity. It connects to the feeling of defeat and brokenness that the Ten of Swords spoke about in “The Lemonade” post recently.

Clairaudience (intuitive hearing) gives the words “Own what you feel.”

2022 may be more bittersweet in retrospect than we realized. (Which is what brought this old post to mind. It resonates a little with yesterdays reading and that trace of melancholy and bittersweet remembrance.)

My mind again goes to those lost to gun violence, or as one newscaster put it to all the chairs that will be tragically empty this holiday season. It is perfectly understandable how grief of this magnitude can leave its mark on the collective energy, both on a conscious and unconscious level. Emotions of every kind tend to run high during the holiday season.

Whatever the emotion, whatever the intensity, whatever the reason, you have to own them and validate them even if no one else will. The emotions exist. They are valid and they are real and, more importantly, they are yours. How you express them and how you act upon them are your responsibility just like a kingdom is the responsibility of the king.

Once acknowledged, emotions can be let go. Once understood, they are less likely to resurface in disruptive ways. It’s not magic. It’s social science. It’s human psychology.

And it’s how Tarot works. Tarot works, not to accurately predict the future, but to help us own and understand our emotions. Psychologist Carl Jung taught that “Until the unconscious is made conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Tarot helps us find exactly that kind of insight.

It’s not my intention to equate Tarot readings with qualified clinical therapy, or a cure for any sort of mental health issue. It is, however, a great tool for stress management and personal growth for a healthy individual. I say that based on hundreds of readings over the course of twenty years of doing public professional Tarot readings and thirty years of using Tarot for myself. Time and time and time over again I would see people relax as a reading progressed. As we talked about new ideas, explored possibilities and validated their own intuitive hunches, shoulders would go down, foreheads would smooth. As readings go on, people would sit back in their chairs and the tone of their voice would soften. The easing of emotional tension was obvious, even to someone with no formal psychology or body language training.

Tarot works by helping us all own our emotions, understand our situations and create a more reasoned way forward.

Tarot doesn’t predict our fate, it frees us from it.

The Day Shift and the Moon

The energy path for the week unfolds.

The three cards for this week in Monday’s Energy Path reading were:

Fading Energy: Three of Pentacles
Current Energy: Five of Cups
Growing Energy: The Moon

I had the bright idea that we’d revisit the growing energy on Fridays to see if and how the week’s energies have unfolded compared to the reading.

Today seems to be a better day for that look back. It feels like this set of cards is right on target reading the week. I get no sense of the Three of Pentacles at all. The Five of Cups is in full force today, but the energy overall feels on the precipice of a gentle shift.

Here is what we talked about a few days ago:

Growing energy: The Moon. The Moon Tarot card is about intuition, psychic ability, spiritual journeying and all of that, true enough, but this time it is pointing more toward energy of natural cycles. The moon is tied to the cycles of the tides. The moon has the obvious phases plus it’s yearly drift from being at its farthest from Earth (apogee) and being a bit closer (perigee). The moon is cycles within cycles, gradual drifts and shifts. This month is a close-orbit time of year, what people have started calling a “supermoon.” All of this points to the cyclic energy. All the stagnation energy from the past several weeks might begin to move, albeit calmly and slowly. Let it take its own pace for the best outcome. You can’t make the tide rise any faster than it does. Let your energy level and emotional levels take their own natural pace, too. Things will cycle through, be patient.

Before we get to the Moon’s energy, we have today and the Five of Cups.The best way I can think of to describe today’s energy is “slack tide.” There is a point in time during every tide cycle where the water is still. The tide has hit its highest or lowest point for that cycle, and is still for a moment before it turns to flow in the opposite direction. Today is that point of stillness.

The Five of Cups has a feeling of melancholy and remembrance.

I am reminded of several of the mental images that have come with collective energy readings over the past few years, largely to do with the Covid pandemic and political turbulence in the the U.S. They were images dealing with impending storms and the aftermath.

Healing is never sudden nor does it march along in a straight line. There are cycles within it. There are steps back with the steps forward. There are times of looking back and looking around, remembering, acknowledging and honoring to go along with bittersweet times of moving forward.

There is a sense of anticipation, of movement, of that first step forward after a time of taking a step back.

I am reminded of the line in the song “Cloudbusting” that “something good is going to happen.”

Key word here, today, is “going.” This might not be the time quite yet. For now, allow your feelings whatever they are. Be in your moment, whatever it is. The cycles will turn soon enough.

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Odin’s Day Oracle

Oracle Card for Wodensday

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This post is inspired by three of my many favorite things: Alliteration, the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck and the book American Gods by Neil Gaimon

In the book, “Mr. Wednesday” is, or at least is a reference to, Odin (also spelled Woden) for whom Wednesday is named. If I’m not posting some sort of “learn with me” post on Wednesdays, I thought it might be a good time to look at oracle cards (which you read the exact same way as you read RWS Tarot or any cards) or other oracle / guidance tool like pendulums or charm casting, or I Ching or bibliomancy or any of the other untold number of such techniques. In other words, Wednesdays and Fridays are pretty wide open. Mondays are earmarked for the energy week ahead readings. Thor…Thursdays get the newsletter. If weekends get any blogging at all, it will be over on Sage’s Other Words on who-knows-what topic.

Seriously, it could be anything. I hope you’ll follow both blogs, but I’m always grateful for anything you read here or there. I’m also grateful for any likes or shares you can spare. Nothing I do online is monetized and all of this free content depends on your private reading orders, memberships and virtual coffees over on Ko-fi.

Now, back to the card with the name I have no earthly idea how to pronounce. I’m going with the name in the guide book “King of Flint.”

When I saw the art by Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapantli. My impression was immediately “The Power of Myth” … also a favorite book.

The primary influence for the image is clearly mesoamerican, but also feels like it has elements of a Medieval knight in armour and a classic Samurai. Warriors are warriors I suppose.

The energy I’m getting feels disconnected from the meanings described in the guidebook about winter, snow, justice, judgement, swift and emotionless execution. In addition to being an amalgam of cultures, the card feels like an amalgam of Judgement, Justice, plus the King and Queen of Swords from the classic Tarot deck.

The energy I sense is more like a Shaolin Monk. Combat-able, certainly but guided by something much more spiritual and abstract.

And I do mean spiritual, not…not…never…in no respect, religious. This is not about that faith without works trope because faith is the farthest thing in the world from this energy. This is in no way about “faith” in anything that originated externally.

This is about a deep and abiding trust in one’s internal spiritual and philosophical compass. This is about trusting your inner knowing and claiming your power in a big way without emotion getting too much in the way.

The myth, the outer cues are inspiration.

The power, however, is in your hands.

Myth has power because it can inspire action.

Warriors act, but they act wisely and with a great deal of self control.

“A [warrior] fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him” – G.K. Chesterson

Alleyman’s Tarot Deck by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission, Publishing Goblin LLC

Shift

Energy Tarot for the week ahead in our usual lofi chill style

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Merry Monday! Pour yourself a cup of something to sip and let’s see what energies are around this week.

I’m going to use the format I would use for you if this was a private, one to one email reading. Keep in mind that this is a collective energy, general blog reading so if it doesn’t fit, don’t worry. There are tons of free readings in the archives. Feel free to use the search bar or browse old posts. You might find something that resonates for you individually.

Today’s cards are:

Fading Energy: Three of Pentacles
Current Energy: Five of Cups
Growing Energy: The Moon

General Pattern: Energy has been low and languishing if not outright stagnant for the past few weeks. It still feels very calm and slow moving, almost stately. The mental image here is of a deep, wide river, like the Mississippi. There is movement but it is far from crashing rapids or a waterfall. This is not the kind of beginning you might see with a Fool card, but more of a gradual shift. Here the mental image becomes a sand dune, with a shallow layer of sand skittering down the side of the dune in a light breeze. I hear the sound of it, like a rasping droplet noise, like a rainstick toy. We see a lower number minor arcana card moving into a slightly higher minor arcana card before finally moving into the higher energy of a major arcana card. Things are beginning to shift, but slowly, in a relaxed, chill, natural sort of way.

There is a sense of advice here: don’t push. Let the shift happen naturally. Pushing could lead to falling down the dune and not landing well.

Fading Energies: The three of pentacles (coins) reflects the work environment. Teamwork is key. This is a card of collaboration. Again there is that sense of “don’t push.” This is not the week to make waves. Teambuild as best as you can and put career / work on autopilot as best as you can. It would be helpful to have this practical, physical realm part of life be stable as energies turn inward. Energies are starting to shift from head to heart, from physical to emotional.

Current Energies: There is a trace of nostalgia, melancholy, maybe even regret around this card. Not every moment of life is joy and euphoria. If it is – something is wrong. Not every moment of life is gloom and despair. If it is – something is wrong. This card doesn’t feel like it is touching either extreme of emotion. There is something vaguely goth about this energy. Sometimes it is ok to be very low energy, low key, apathetic and have a little mope. Again, it is back to lay back and channel your inner Wednesday Addams. Pushing or striving is the exact wrong vibe right now. The shift is beginning. Stay chill. Watch, wait, save the emotional wattage for when the time is right. Blandness is your friend for the moment. Don’t worry, it will all change soon enough

Growing energy: The moon. The moon is about intuition, psychic ability, spiritual journeying and all off that, true enough but this time it is pointing more toward cycles. The moon is tied to the cycles of the tides. The moon has the obvious phases plus it’s yearly drift from being at its farthest from Earth (apogee) and being a bit closer (perigee). The moon is cycles within cycles, gradual drifts and shifts. This month is a close-orbit time of year, what people have started calling a “supermoon.” All of this points to the cyclic energy. All the stagnation energy from the past several weeks might begin to move, albeit calmly and slowly. Let it take its own pace for the best outcome. You can’t make the tide rise any faster than it does. Let your energy level and emotional levels take their own natural pace, too. Things will cycle through, be patient.

Summary: In a private reading, I’d give any direct psychic / intuitive information that comes through whether it has to do with your question or cards or not. This part seldom offers much, if anything to a collective reading – although I did get a quick flash of a tumbled, polished citrine, for whatever that is worth.

Something about Grandmother’s here too. Find something comforting – a favorite sweater, a favorite food, a favorite song. Find something that comforts you and indulge a little in that.

And there the energies step back

I hope that helps.

Right now, I feel like I need a break from the Orale Dice series. I might just pull a card, maybe from an oracle deck instead of classic Tarot. Either way, I hope you’ll join me here on Wednesday when we’ll take another sip of something.

See you then!

Organized August?

How do you organize a rave?

I’m only writing this to get myself organized. Maybe. Everything here is subject to sudden, random, unannounced changes. Let the squirrel rave of life begin!

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All blog and social media content is intended for fun and personal enrichment only. These posts read general, zeitgeist, collective energies. If it resonates for you personally – great! If a post doesn’t resonate for you personally, please try a private reading or browse the archives with the search bar.
Monday: Three card energy path reading. This is the same format as a private “pathway” reading with me by email. EMAIL READINGS ARE MY SPECIALTY and I hope these readings 1. show you how useful email readings are and 2. gives you a good start to the new week.
Tuesday: day job day – private email readings only
Wednesday: “Learn With Me” – explore other oracles, or Tarot behind the scenes.
Thursday: Weekly newsletter on Medium, this blog and on the ko-fi blog
Friday: revisit the “growing energy” card from Monday’s reading to update for the weekend. Maybe. Might be other topics, might be a fresh one card draw or I may blow it off entirely depending on the day and intuition.
Saturday: posting on Sage’s Other Words about non-Tarot topics, if anything. Maybe nothing, depending on what’s going on.
Sunday: closed. (It’s not a religious thing…it just fits the schedule)

Squirrel phot0 is public domain as best as I can tell.

“I don’t have ducks. I don’t have rows. I have squirrels and they are hosting a pagan rave” – unknown

“The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.” – Aurora

Learn With Me: Meet the Alleyman

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This is an interesting post to write. My love of writing, my love of Tarot, my cynical desire to attract Tarot clients with the blog and socials and my sincere admiration for the Alleyman Tarot, Oracle and Podcast are all crashing into each other right now.

In his YouTube posts for the original Alleyman Tarot deck, Mr. Asmund hinted at vision of the deck creator, card artists, Tarot readers and Tarot clients all being a part of ephemeral, ethereal, muse-like collective I that co-creates the giving of messages and spiritual learning. My hope is to contribute. My impulse is to boost the signal in whatever small way I can. I don’t want to take inadvertent advantage of their hard work and popularity.

In the spirit of full disclosures, I feel compelled to take the usual detour to tell you that this isn’t a paid promotion, nothing was provided by Publishing Goblin except their kind permission to use these materials in my blogging and social media. I want to be a good member of the “Alleyfolk” so please, visit publishinggoblin.com and be sure to read the artist credits in the guidebooks if you can. Sometimes I get in the flow of reading and forget to be careful with attribution details. If you ever catch me doing that, please ask for source material. As woo woo as my Tarot side can be, I’m also equal parts science geek and academician so I’m happy to give credit where credit is due. According to the dice guidebook, the artist for today’s Lord Card is credited as Czarfunkle.

There are parallels between the oracle dice and Tarot cards. After we chose 7 of the 22 dice to use as a learning exercise, we looked at one individual side or face on each die. That single-face level felt very analogous to a single Tarot card. Each die has a name and theme. Additionally each die has an accompanying “Lord Card” that symbolizes the die’s guide and guardian. Those of you who have worked with your spirit guides might get a little of that vibe as we explore the oracle dice at the name and lord card level. The dice name and lord card resonates with the suit or arcana level meanings in a Tarot reading as I see it.

Today is the Alley die. We first looked at its single face, “scavenge.” Now we broaden the focus to include its card, The Alleyman.

At both the single face and lord card levels, I’ve found a lot of overlap between the dice and Tarot cards. Seven Dane Asmund is clearly a very skilled Tarot reader and deck creator, but it doesn’t feel like that is a direct influence as much as a by-product. Both Tarot and the oracle dice look at the same grand truisms and core human experiences.

As the energy looks today, this card / die combo resonates with a blend of the Queen of Cups, the Queen of Swords and the Emperor with a sprinkle of the World card for good measure.

“The Alleyman doesn’t exist…He exists to be the bogeyman of your uncertainty.”
Seven Dane Asmund

The Alleyman card and die challenge us to recognize our own deep competence when it comes to setting our own path. The Queen of cups is about finding our own deep inner wisdom and knowing. The Queen of Swords teaches us to accept and own our power. The Emperor teaches us to use that inner wisdom and self-acceptance with confidence.

The energy of the Alleyman Lord card resonantes with the energy of the Alleyman’s Tarot deck and feels like an extension of that lore.

From the moment I learned about it, I thought the Alleyman’s Tarot was to Tarot readers what a Stradivarius is to violin players.

This comparison draws a little bit on intangibles like ‘star power’ and ‘stage presence’ and thus draws on the qualities of the two queens and Emperor.

If a performer expect an instrument’s quality to make or break their performance, they give away their power, their part in the process. A poor player can make a rare violin sound mediocre. By the same token, a player who puts their best self into the performance will touch the audience’s heart with any instrument. A master player can give a virtuoso performance on a toy instrument. Give a Stradivarius to someone like Itzhak Perlman and magic happens. Inner wisdom, power and confidence alignt with outer circumstance to make something greater than the sum of the parts.

The same is true of Tarot and oracle readings.

If you surrender your power to the cards or dice, the guidance is mediocre. If you surrender your part in the reading, even if the professional you consult is the best on Earth, the impact on your well being is limited.

Own your part in creating your own fate and you can get an excellent reading with a pack of playing cards from the corner dollar store. The Alleyman…the right message for you…will find you one way or another.

This is where the World Tarot card comes in. All is one. We are part of the greater cosmos. Just as in the Alleyman’s podcast backstory those who encounter the deck and the alleyman co-create the reading and the experience. Our individual deep wisdom and knowing is as valid for ourselves and our place within the universe as anyone else’s insight.

More so.

Relying on a stranger’s advice or predictions is like relying on the instrument to make or break the performance. Taking that advice or insight under consideration but ultimately, relying on your own wisdom is the virtuoso performance.

Learning, growing, getting guidance from a metaphoric shadowy alley man when you need it – that is how you become part of this artist’s collective that we call life.

Thank you for reading along! I hope you will follow this blog and check out PublishingGoblin.com to learn more.

See you at the next sip!

Looking Forward to the Weekend

Two of Wands Tarot: Liminal space helps us look forward

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Earlier this week, we looked at three cards for the week. The growing energy was…and is…the two of wands.

The collective energy is a little bit of a tough read this morning. It is a swirl of collective individualism. It feels a little like an abstract pointillist painting – any patterns or pictures that are made of uncountable individual dots. I’m also getting mental images of other abstract art: Jackson Pollack, acrylic paint pours or water marbled crafts. Even in social gatherings it feels like each individual is an island unto themselves with a inner focus, contemplative, day-dreaming quality.

For some, it might feel really lonely and isolated. I get a tinge of regrets, and looking back.

That might be where the two of wands comes in.

It is advice leaning even more today than it was 5 days ago. There is a sense that we are being asked to deliberately look forward, find hope, and hang in there with every claw on our little kitten paws, just like the meme.

More than that, my attention is even more strongly drawn to the idea of liminal space and the “standing on the threshold” quality of the figure between the two staffs, the two wands.

I’ve only started reading Laura Tempest Zarkof’s book Weaving The Liminal. I’m taking this as a hint to pick that up again this weekend.

For the collective, think of terms like liminal, terminal (like an airport terminal or travel hub with changes and connections) portal, gateway…

Places like that are intensely present-moment. It makes sense out of the natural retrospective energy combined with the advice to look ahead in hope…

It makes sense.

Evaluating where we are and understanding how we got here is essential to getting where we want to go next. They are necessary to calling what we need to us.

Pay attention to your connection to the universe on its largest scale. In that large, cosmic perspective you are never alone and there is always hope.

If you are part of the majority who has the weekend off from work, the energy now is a good chance to spend some quality time with yourself to think about the path that has brought you here and what is your next step.

If you are one of those at work – thank you. Whatever your next days off may be has a good chance of giving you this same opportunity for contemplation.

In short, find a mental and emotional sanctuary that helps you to transition from the past, however hard, to a more hopeful view of the future.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go read more of that book.

Next up, the energy path reading for next week. See you at the next sip!