Tarot Cards – Page 95 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Fun with photo editing

Took a few tries, but I think this will do

TaoCraft Tarot Credo

Wabi sabi is wonderful

Of course, the first time I heard the term, my first thought was the green paste that comes with sushi, which I also adore.

As I understand it, Wabi Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic style that embraces the rustic and imperfect. Kintsugi is an art form based in that style (and philosophy, really) where broken things are repaired but the joint are accented with precious metals.

Beautiful!

I’ve admired Japanese and Chinese culture for ages. Time and time and time again Taoism and Zen (Ch’an) has proven true for me and added to the quality of my life. I’ve gone back to it so many times, Imma stay right here (hence the re-branding name change thing.)

To my mind, wabi sabi is very much akin to the smiling Lau Tzu in the classic print “The Vinegar Tasters.” Sure, vinegar tastes sour and bitter, but OK…that is exactly how vinegar is supposed to taste. Sure, things get broken, but OK…we can fix it as best as we can and maybe make it into something better. Sure, life has its bumps, lumps, asymmetries, cracks, hiccups and outright disasters, but OK….that is what life is. As @officialmadamadam said on Instagram, “Shit doesn’t happen to you, shit just happens” or as Ajahn Sumedho titled his book Don’t Take Your Life Personally or as Duane Toops and Jim Martin have said in The Unusual Buddha podcast and social media “embrace the suck.”

Big recommends for all three sources.

But, as always, it begs the question of what does THAT have to do with Tarot. This is a Tarot blog for goodness’ sake.

It is about the pop culture perception of a fortune teller’s predictions vs the true spiritual nature and practical use of our native intuition (and the tools like Tarot that helps us to access that intuition)

Tarot can’t make the sour taste sweet, but it can help us to appreciate a good pickle every now and then. Tarot can’t tell you what is going to break or when, but it can help you put it all back together in time.

In-person readings and party Tarot readings are closed due to substantial delta covid community transmission. In-person services will re-open when community transmission returns to low as reported in CDC data. Because science.

Meanwhile, email no appointment needed distance Tarot is available to order 24/7 and LIVE online/phone readings are available by appointment

Today’s Tarot: Friends at Five

The youngling has the best taste in music and YouTube.

We are all a bunch of martial arts loving video gamers. Nothing competitive in our family. Nuh-uh. We were watching “Game Grumps.” I don’t remember what game they were playing, but I like how they described their competitiveness. In typical social media fashion, people conflated the video performance and a media piece for “real life” and was wondering if the two hosts had really argued and disliked each other.

I think what they threw down in a few concise sentences had the makings a good, long post about the Five of Wands….or video games….or kung fu….or sports…or anything that involves healthy competition. They are always “friends at five.” They may have a knock down drag out snarling swearing game of Sonic the Hedgehog, but once they sign off then it’s back to reality, regardless of what the comments say.

I’ve been in sparring matches with some of my favorite people on planet earth. It takes a degree of trust to have at it knowing that the right punches will be pulled and that anything that does happen is pure accident lacking in malicious intent.

Malevolence is the fine line between competition and outright violence. If you can push yourself for the sake of self-improvement, for the sake of the sport (or whatever it is you are doing), or for the sake of your team that’s healthy.

Winning at all costs for pure gain – be it gaining something material or gaining power – is the unhealthy, violent, malevolent part even if the competition in question is tiddly winks or pick up sticks. By the same token, high stakes games can be individually competitive and still wind up in a better place for the greater good everyone….think of Abraham Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” as Doris Kerns Goodwin put it.

The Five of Wands is a reminder to find the good in competition. It is also a caution to avoid letting competition bring out the worst in us instead of distilling and elevating the best in us.

Friyay Tarot

This weekend is going to be a busy one here, so Today’s Tarot is a Friyay Tarot looking at the weekend vibe.

Lucky you if this card is in your path! The nine of wands is about endurance, persistence, recovery. In some instances it has to do with setting boundaries but I don’t get any sense of that sort of thing here.

If stamina and persistence is thwarted or blocked, as the reversal would hint, then the next 72 hours might be a good time to stop struggling. Just stop. The struggle and persistence will still be there on Monday. Pick it up again later, but give it a rest for now.

That isn’t to say it is all fun and games. While playing as hard as you work can be healthy and healing, healing in itself can be hard work, especially on the emotional or spiritual level. Wands cards are associated with the element of fire, the inner world – spirituality, philosophy, your relationship with yourself. Outward battles may need a rest, outward progress and persistence may be blocked or slowed, but the hard work of inner growth and facing yourself is very much at hand. It is a weekend to give it all a rest while you do inner work that will, by comparison, make the external stuff seem easier later on. Witch Instagram tends to put this kind of thing in terms of “shadow work” or “breaking generational curses.” Whatever your tradition, whatever terms you put on it, it is a weekend to look yourself in the eye, and then be kind, nurturing, teaching and healing to the person that you see.

Zombie Cat’s Big Mood

I feel my August ennui slipping into a Zombie Cat-ish slightly sweary snark mode. This is for you blog readers ONLY (this is the kind of thing that will soon go through ko-fi to “reading table” members)

The first person to email TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com with “zombie cat is in a mood” in it somewhere and a question for the cat will get a three card yes/no reading in reply to that selfsame email. Offer ends midnight US eastern time August 12, 2021

Now go get your shots, wear your mask and washyourdamnhands.

Calling it

“…researchers from University College London published a study in the journal “Brain” that describes how some patients have suffered temporary brain dysfunction, strokes, nerve damage, and other neurological problems concurrent with COVID-19.” – https://bigthink.com/coronavirus/covid-19-brain

Even though it it is a year-old article, I haven’t heard of any newer studies that contradict it. This just confirms my decision to put in-person Tarot on hold again until further notice.

No appointment email and live online or phone readings by appointment are OPEN.

I like my brain.

I hope you like yours, too. I hope everyone will get vaccinated AND wear a mask in indoor public spaces because even we, the vaxxed and responsible, can spread these highly contagious and potentially lethal mutant delta germs to young children, immunocompromised people, and unvaccinated rightwingdumasses.

Oh – and wash your damn hands. It’s almost regular flu season again too.

Today’s Tarot: It’s Essential

Things can’t get better if they don’t change. Without change, there can be no hope for improvement or problem solving.

It’s not change that we fear: it’s risk.

When things change, there is a danger that things can get worse. When things change, there is a risk of something precious ending or being lost.

If you remember it, it lives on.

We can’t control change. Life brings change and all the risk that entails – but it brings the possibility of brighter days right along with it.

Today’s Tarot: Squint and Stare

“You reap what you sow” is both the threat of consequences for the bad choices you make and the promise of the good things you give coming back to you. Sometimes you have to stop, lean on your garden hoe, squint and stare at things a bit to figure out which is which.

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” – Nicolaus Copernicus

“And I know what I know girl. But I don’t know what I know when I know it” – The Kongos

Today’s Tarot: From a Certain Point of View

Deja Vu. Have we just had this card and this energy recently? There is something out there, in the general zeitgeist energies that is a bit of a flashback replay.

I try to be vigilant about blaming my own issues or emotions on energy, spirit, or any of this psychic intuitive thing…true enough, this could be my annual ‘I don’t like August’ funk, but the volume is turned up higher than usual. I’m not sure what or why, but there is some abstract something that feels like March 2020. Yes, I have my own stuff that probably accounts for a big part of it, and no, I’m not going to share any of it here because I’m very protective of everyone’s privacy, but still, there is some something in the ethers that’s ringing the old intuitive-sensitive bell too.

Has anyone else noticed anything like that or is it just my need for another cup of coffee and a nap? Seriously. Comments and email are open.

For whatever reason, this card and its energy today seems all too familiar.

There were a few ideas so equal, it was hard to pick one for the video caption. First there is the boilerplate “it all depends on your perspective” idea. Think about the view from the standing person’s perspective vs the seated person’s perspective on the card. The standing person can see the way ahead is actually clear and can see the landscape fully for what it really is. If the seated person sees anything of the landscape or the water, it is through sharp edges, gaps in a wall of swords.It is very much reminescent of that Obiwan line from Star Wars about what he told Luke being true “from a certain point of view.” or the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Small shifts in perspective can create big changes in feeling and understanding.

Equal with the idea of perspective, the energy idea of obstacles steps forward. Funny thing, obstacles. Seems like you will either crash into them, crash through them, or figure a way around them. If an obstacle is perpetually floating just in front of you, like swords stuck in the canoe you are riding in, is it really an obstacle at all?

YouChoose Interactive Tarot August 9-16

Interactive Tarot videos might be away for the second half of August, but I won’t be. I’m right here and available for email readings anytime. Order 24/7 and I’ll get the reading right to your inbox, usually within 12-24 hours (weekends and holidays are slower) And there is always new blog-only content trickling in. It pays to follow the blog. It’s the only way to get ALL of TaoCraft Tarot content one convenient place.

So I’m not on hiatus one bit.

I’ll be right here winding some things down from summer and spooling some other things up for fall. You can preview some of it now at https://ko-fi.com/taocrafttarot. Your support goes toward webhosting the blog, and producing more posts and podcast episodes.

I am, as always grateful to you for sharing some time with me and reading this. You rock!