Category: Tarot Cards

Tarot readings and card discussions

Brighter Horizon

Sage Sips is Tarot for your week in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

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Today’s cards:

  • Fading Energy: Three of Swords
  • Current Energy: The Fool
  • Growing Energy:

I’ve been asked before why it is that different readers readers give different readings for the same card.

There are a variety of reasons, and any one or any combination of them could factor into it when you get very different readings about the same identical card.

First is the passage of time. As ancient Greek philosopher Hericlitus put it, a man can’t cross the same river twice because it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Time passes and your situation changes just like water flows through a river so it is different water each time you step in.

Past readings have an effect on you. Time passes and you grow and change. You are a different person than you were the last time that card was read for you.

Different time, different water, different person: you can’t cross the same Tarot card twice. If you do it is pretty astounding and you should definitely pay attention to what intuition / spirit is trying to tell you.

Three days ago we talked about the Page of Cups and last week’s end-of-week vibe. Things have shifted again already.

Sometimes the river current is faster than others.

Apparently it is flowing fairly quickly here. I expect this week will step through the three cards fairly quickly, too. It will be interesting to see if that proves true by the time we get to Friday’s “weekend update” post.

Because of that pace, I think the “fading energy” layout position of the three of swords is significant, to the point of giving a “don’t” or “kick this energy to the curb” sort of message.

The three of sword’s nature is cautioning anyway. Heads up, watch your back – don’t. I ‘hear’ “tiny heartbreak” When I put this card & energy into the context of the whole reading, I get “don’t make little disappointments into big heartbreaks.”

The Fool card is, of course, about beginnings.

In most RWS based Tarot decks, a human figure is shown posed between two poles, the two wands. This draws my attention to the “threshold” key word associated with the card. It looks like a doorway. This card hints at magickal, liminal space, a gateway to something important or a portal where we can draw in what is wanted and needed. Whatever your thoughts about attraction and manifestation, this card can be read as something new on the horizon.

The “new beginning” big major arcana energy from the Fool card combined with the liminal, doorway, portal, energy from the Two of Wands weights the whole layout on the side of forward thinking hopefullness.

Bring it all together and we get a week that starts off a little off kilter, on edge, on the lookout for who-knows-what kind of funky mojo, but rapidly moves to something new and more hopeful.

Today feels a little weird, but at the same time it feels like something brighter is on the horizon.

Hang in there.

Deep

Bringing the week in for a landing with a look back at the Page of Cups

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Some weeks, energies linger. Some weeks they grow and fade slowly or by small amounts.

This morning feels like one of those 90 degree lightcycle turns from the movie Tron.

Last weekend and earlier this week there was a very active, warrior archetype energy. Today “spooling down” comes to mind. It feels like we’ve just landed a plane and are going through the power-down checklist. It feels like the end of a cycle much bigger than a day or a week. The cycle may even be something that has been brewing in the background for you for the past 12 to 18 months. I read somewhere that this is the time of year that the Maori people celebrate new year…a thread from Neil DeGrasse Tyson maybe? Something about the New Year for them being tied to the rising of Pleiades during southern hemisphere winter. Anyway – even though we are in the middle of the “dog days” of summer here, cycles of nature within cycles of nature can be found anywhere, almost anytime.

It makes sense that the Page of Cups energy is stepping forward today.

Usually the Page of Cups, the “growing energy” card from Monday’s Energy Path reading, has a playful feel, acting as a reminder of life’s absurdities. It has a much different tone today. All of the cup’s court cards have an element of emotional depth to them. Instead of the absurd, the fish is resonating with its classic symbolism representing the human psyche. Today instead of looking life’s absurdities in the eye, we are being asked to look ourselves in the eye and know our own depths.

When I’m reverse engineering a collective energy reading into a previously chosen card like this, sometimes I’ll browse quote sources like BrainyQuotes.com or Goodreads.com for inspiration. That’s how I found “I want you to be everything you feel is you, deep in the center of your being.” It is attributed to Confucius. I’m no expert on the Analects or Chinese translation, but it doesn’t strike me as something Confucius would say. It sounds vastly more contemporary.

Confucius or not, it does resonate with Socrates’ famous “Know thyself.” You have to have some idea about what is deep within in order to live it, to be it.

I connect this to today’s Page of Cups two ways.

First is just that. Look deep. Know thyself so you can be and live thyself fully and authentically.

Second I want to go back to the idea of resonance that we’ve talked about before.

When you are reading Tarot (for yourself or for others) you want to know what is internal and what is external – know what is really your mood and what is you vibrating along with the overall, general, zeitgeist sort of energies. That is as true for energies that are winding down as when they are starting up.

A helpful way to sort that out is to focus on your energy boundaries. Sometimes that is put into words as “strengthening your aura” or “Closing your energy field”.

Try this: Lace your fingers together, then close your eyes and imagine you are surrounded by a colorful soap bubble. How does it feel. What do you sense as the difference (if any) between ‘in here’ and ‘out there’? If your shielded energy is the same as before, the sense of things is coming from the inside – its you. If it is different – it is still you, but a you that is strongly vibing to external conditions.

Today ‘in here’ is jamming to Stanton Moore and feeling pretty nominal in the mission control sense of the word – everything is in normal limits, no alarms.

Out there is that end of cycle, coming in for an uneventful landing shift in energy.

Either way, this weekend is a good time for ‘normal’ not to push, shift into yin from a long time of yang

Either way, I wish you a good weekend. See you Monday for the next Energy Path for next week!

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip! – Sage

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Catwoman Had a Baby, reprise

This post throws WAY back to the Modern Oracle days. It is from the “Tarot Without a Net” series where I was working with Thom Pham’s Heart of Stars Tarot deck much the same way as I have been with the Alleyman’s Tarot and with the Publishing Goblin’s oracle dice. I’d do an intuitive read then follow that up with the author’s interpretation. Thom Pham and Seven Dane Asmund are both very skilled Tarot readers and very talented artists and I am very grateful they graciously gave their permission to use their work in my blogging and social media.

MEMBERS can read the full post HERE

I don’t like calling this exclusive content when I want my Tarot work to be warm, inviting, calm, cozy and inclusive. I’m taking inspiration from Joyce Vance’s excellent substack Civil Discourse and am calling this a thank-you post for paid subscribers.

Ko-fi Sage Sip members get much more than occasional members-only content! Members also get discounts on email readings and free one card reading by email through the Sage Words Tarot ko-fi shop. Join today to get ALL of the benefits.

image: Heart of Stars Tarot third edition by Thom Pham, used with permission

Momento Mori

Today: The Death card and lofi chill

Please remember me if you ever want an affordable, professional Tarot reading. Private readings by email don’t need an appointment. This free Tarot content is fueled by reading purchases, memberships, and coffee (both irl and the virtual ko-fi kind). Your comments, likes and social media shares are always appreciated.

The August blahs are starting early this year.

I blame the hot, humid weather and suppressed rage at anyone who doesn’t care about global warming. Republicans and oil companies are going to get us all killed at this rate.

But I digress. Sort of.

It’s interesting how the collective energy sometimes is reflected in private readings or vice versa. It’s a little chicken and egg. People who come to me as clients contribute to the collective energy, which would explain some threads of similarity. At the same time these perceptive folks may be drawn to a reading because of the collective energy, which also explains similarities. Either way it always feels validating as a reader to see the collective show up in a private session or cards from private sessions repeat a time or two in collective readings.

The energy has shifted from death card to death card. It feels like the resistance to change from earlier has shifted to a sort of weary acceptance. It feels like instead of resisting the inevitable, we’ve slipped into a semi-comfortable expectation of a certain degree of upheaval. It feels like time to take a sippy sip of our soupy soup and calmly watch the mayhem unfold.

I like to think that is the essence of Sage Sips. Calm. Reassuring. If my Tarot style was described in music terms, I like to think it is LoFi Chill.

Stay safe, stay chill and stay hydrated. See you Monday for next week’s energy path reading.

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice, The Crone of Summer

Sage Sips blog is a contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee

I don’t know much about Dungeons & Dragons, but I’d call this character chaotic good.

This is a really lovable card, and it’s tempting to join the chaos, but I’m in full sun-avoidant deep shade forest baby Grogu sipping soup and calmly watching the mayhem unfold mood. You don’t always have to participate in order to appreciate.

Let’s stay methodical this week.

Tarot, or any good intuition enhancing too, has layers of meaning just like ogres and onions.

The first we looked at a single face from the dice – analogous to drawing individual cards for a Tarot layout. By randomly rolling seven times we selected 7 “practice dice” out of the 22 dice set to work with as we get to know the Oracle Dice. Learning the oracle dice parallels the way I learned Tarot. I’ve distilled YEARS of trial and error into this step by step thing we are doing. I’m learning the oracle dice this way because I KNOW this way of learning and reading oracle tools … any intuition helper…works. I know it works well because I’ve been doing it for a hot minute. Longer than I care to admit most days.

You get the idea about the individual faces and how to look at those.

Now we are going through our practice dice one by one looking at it from the die cube meaning. The Oracle Dice’s creator, Seven Dane Asmund assigned a name and meaning to each of the 22 dice (one of which is a cool 12 face die) In this edition, he also created a card with the “lord” of each of the dice. The “lord” in this case is a parallel to the suit in Tarot. The “lord” is the essence of die’s meaning, its guardian, its protector, sort of the ace, king and queen all rolled into one.

Today’s die is “summer” depicted as the “Crone of Summer.” It’s perfect that the image on the card includes gold coins because this card encapsulates much of the same energies as the suit of coin (pentacles) in Tarot. There is easy, almost careless generosity around it. It is so fully and unabashedly about the physical realm that it rises above the physical realm and becomes something more esoteric, much as the ten of pentacles (coins) is so fully prosperous and abundant that it points to the intangible treasures of love and happiness that money can never buy. Such is the effusive joi de vie embodied by the crone of summer.

You know how I see the world through Taoism colored glasses

The dots in the yin yang symbol represent the idea that anything in its extreme holds the seed of its opposite. We see that in the ten of pentacles and the Crone of Summer. The physical realm taken to its extreme can hold the seed of its opposite. In excess creation lies the potential for destruction. In excess possession lies the potential for generosity and so on.

When we move on to the next layer – combining dice – when the summer die rolls in, think of it in unabashed and golden terms like full throttle summer and an exuberant generosity of self and spirit

Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate your generosity with your time.

If you ever want a private Tarot reading, please think of me. The free Tarot and other content here on the Sage Sips blog and on Sage Words Tarot social media is fueled by your reading purchases, your memberships and lots of coffee (both irl and the virtual kind on ko-fi)

Your likes, follows, shares and comments are always greatly appreciated!

*Publishing Goblin‘s Oracle Dice used with permission

Obvious Change

Please think of me if you ever want a private Tarot reading. Affordable, professional email Tarot readings are available to order anytime, no appointment needed. The FREE Tarot content on this blog, the Ko-fi blog and social media is fueled by private readings, memberships and coffee. Your likes, follows, comments, virtual coffees and social media shares are always appreciated!

This is a first.

It’s new but not difficult.

The Alleyman’s Tarot is unique, as far as I know. It’s intended to be. The customization is the irresistible part of the deck. From the beginning, Seven Dane Asmund, has encouraged deck owners to follow the Alleyman’s lead and take cards out or put cards into the deck as opportunity and intuition prompt. This original deck was curated from many artists and decks, and has multiples of several cards, especially if you add in the expansion packs. Which I did.

I’ve always used standard, one of each card RWS decks up until this one. Believe it or not, I still don’t use the Alleyman’s deck ALL of the time. Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve done a reading with multiples of one card in it.

It’s fitting that the first multiple card is Death, change because it takes a small shift in perspective. Fitting, but not surprising and certainly not supernatural. Of all the multiples in the Alleyman’s deck, the most common card is the major arcana Death card and I’m glad because the artwork on these things is phenomenal. This is serious, gorgeous, hang it on a museum wall art.

But two deaths in one reading? Do they cancel each other out like adding negative numbers? Actually, it kind of fits right in with the way I read Tarot.

It’s easy, actually.

In the past we’ve talked about each card can have multiple key words and multiple threads of meaning. Different artwork for the same card just fits right in with that.

We’ve seen this in action before. There have been times when the image from one deck or another resonates with the energy message at hand. When the energy brings to mind the image from a different deck…I’ll tell you, so you can google it and see the different visuals for yourself.

That’s all there is to it for multiples of the same card. They aren’t identical. The images are different, and convey different aspects of that same card. The multiple different cards are different facets of the same diamond.

We’ve talked about reversals before too. I let intuition lead. If it feels like nothing, I’ll just flip the card upright and go on. If it feels significant, I read it as an indication of blocked or challenged or turbulent energy. That’s the case today, so the “smoke” death and the high priestess are staying reversed (upside down relative to the person doing the reading)

Intuitively the reading today came through as this one concise idea: Make the obviously needed change; we always fight the demons alone.

There is a trace of that adage to stop waiting for the perfect time because the time is never perfect.

The fading energy is death upside down….resistance and blockages around changing are fading. I don’t know if “resistance is useless” as the Vogons said, but it certainly is decreasing.

If you like TV that is even older than the Vogons and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, cue the Brady Bunch episode where Peter’s voice keeps cracking so they write into the “It’s time to change” song.

How’s that for an outdated pop culture reference?

The High Priestess is about the mysterious. What is a blocked or turbulent mystery? It could mean it is something utterly unknowable. I know I’ve said that reversals don’t automatically mean the exact opposite of the usual meaning for the card, but in this case it turns out to be functionally the same thing as inverting the meaning. If something fails at being mysterious, it is obvious. If something is having a hard time hiding, it is seen.

Put these two together and the first half of this week’s message is get your head out of the sand and face the obvious. Something needs to change and avoiding it isn’t helping.

From those two we head into a more classic, death or horseback card. This one is harsh, down to brass tacks, realistic confrontation of violent ends. In the reading we go from ethereal smokey death to violent bloody death – death.

Although not usually related to the death card, I intuitively get this is about confronting inner demons, about an internal change. There may be something about ourselves we don’t want to admit or face, but it is something we’ve known for a long time. “Suspected from the beginning” comes through here.

All that and I still haven’t touched the guidebook.

Let’s see how this unfolds, and I’ll read the Alleyman’s Notebook on the cards and maybe we can weave that in on Friday or Saturday for the weekend update if nothing gets in the way this week.

Photo by the author of this weeks real-world card layout. Alleyman’s Tarot deck used with permission of Publishing Goblin LLC