Weekend Oracle: One Touch

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

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”

William Shakespeare

Yes, by all means, go touch grass this weekend. Or any time.

I forget the source, but somebody somewhere did a small study of the effects of looking at photos of natural settings on real time blood pressure. Just looking at nature in a photo will bring blood pressure down.

Imagine what a small barefoot walk in the grass can do.

I don’t know if anyone has gone full science on it, or followed up the long term effects of engaging with nature on one level or another, even a photographic one.

It seems to me that one touch of nature is a good thing for humans, both psychologically and physiologically. We are wired that way.

It also seems to me that human nature is part of the nature that Shakespeare mentions, even though I doubt he meant it that way as he lived and wrote centuries before the advent of modern psychology. The Taoists were down with the whole idea centuries before Shakespeare.

Feeling connected is a basic human need, for everyone everywhere, throughout time. This weekend touch grass. If not the literally, touch something that is part of your own nature to enjoy. Enjoy some small part of the environment you are in, including urban ones. When you enjoy any little anything, you are connected to not only that thing, but all of your fellow humans that enjoy that thing too.

An ice cream cone, a barefoot walk in the backyard, a bike ride, jog in the park, a little phone scroll, a cup of coffee and a good book, play your favorite song just a little bit louder than usual; whatever it is in your nature to enjoy, touch that. As long as it harms no one, do what you will to paraphrase a saying. Touch your happiness, and you can connect with the energy of all the others who have found a similar joy.

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Find Your Tribe

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Today’s energy: Ten of Swords

Failures, obstacles, and betrayals take time to heal even as life demands that healing. The more painful the experience, the stronger the message that this is not the path for you.

You are not your failures, unless you accept them as such. Take them as a message and an opportunity to learn or to change direction then suddenly painful setbacks are just signposts along your way.

Next Step: Nine of Cups

This is a card of community and celebration. Found family heals. Found community supports. Your true tribe is a place of love and acceptance wherever and whoever they may be.

Your true tribe is the people and places that energize you, uplift you, comfort you, and make you feel most deeply at home. Only you can who your tribe is. No one can tell you who your tribe should be.

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The Core

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

“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”

Brendan Behan, poet

Though not as extreme as the passion, lust and desire embodied in the major arcana Lovers card, and despite the overlay of watching, waiting, and expecting, there is a wistful, yearning quality to the two of wands.

The Lovers asks what is your passionate flaming desire.

The Two of Wands asks what is your nagging, persistent emptiness? What is your constant yearning? Sometimes this is the greater motivator and the greater suffering by virtue of being a constant companion.

You have another constant companion – yourself.

Summer Schedule

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

There still isn’t one. The squirrels have been raging hard the past few weeks.

I’m liking the one card meditation posts, so will continue those for the time being sprinkled in between week ahead, choose your own tarot card, weekend Oracle and Action Eases Anxiety type posts.

The $5 tarot reading by email special ends tomorrow (31 May 2025) so get one while you can at https://ko-fi.com/taocrafttarot/commissions

As always, no appointment is needed for email readings. Order any time 24/7. Most readings arrive to you within 24 hours or so. Sometime there are delays when you order on weekends or around holidays. These readings are all just me, one real person with no Tarot assistance, AI or otherwise.

Fingers crossed, the squirrely-ness will settle now, at least a little bit.

See you Sunday or Monday with a choose your own card week-ahead reading!

Long Holiday Weekend

Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

Your favorite simple comforts transform into great treasures when you give them your full attention for a minute. – Sage

I’m taking a couple of days off for the Memorial Day weekend here in the US, but private readings and the ko-fi page are still open for orders. Readings will go out next week starting Tuesday 5-27-25. Happy and safe weekend to everyone everywhere!

Weekend Oracle: Progress

Sage Sips is tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee

My private readings by email are a bargain, and who doesn’t need that in this economy? The way I write them, a five card layout tells you the exact same things I would say to you in an hour (ish) live or in-person session. You get that plus my 30 years of Tarot experience for what other psychics charge for 15-30 minutes. Order yours on my ko-fi page

“Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.”

Noam Chomsky

Even though it is a long holiday weekend here in the US, it may feel like a continuation of the week with all of the travels and get-togethers and summer kick-offs and whatnot.

Maybe it is because of rumors of a new covid strain just as the vaccine program is being sabotaged. To be honest, this might be a projection on my part, but I think a little bit holds true for the collective energies as well.

It doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels like we are being thrown into dynamic, change-filled energy. Again.

One keyword for the Eight of Wands is “progress.” Progress is impossible with out change, without movement. Progress in any direction is still progress.

If you are moving toward failure, great! At least there is something to be learned.

If you are moving away from failure, great! At least you’ve learned from the situation and are making corrections.

If you are moving toward something better, great! Savor the moment.

If you are not moving much at all, great! At least you are getting a chance to rest and recharge. Enjoy it.

Change is a part of life and living. There is always the potential for progress.

The blog will be quiet over the holiday weekend and any reading orders will go out May 27, 2025 or after. Have a happy and safe weekend everyone! See you at the next sip!

Action Eases Anxiety: Trust Fall

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The “Action Eases Anxiety” layout is inspired by the sentence-like quality that Lenormand style tarot readings tend to have. We’ve talked about that before in he “learn with me” series about Lenormand

In this layout, the left card functions as the subject of the sentence. It is the thing that is, be it your current situation or our shared energy environment.

The right card is like the verb in a sentence, the action, the thing to do now that might help the situation – or at lease easy your worry a tiny bit.

Today, the mental image that came with both cards is an advertisement where a person goes “trust fall” and falls backward into a huge pile of dried plants to demonstrate the plant stems and leaves that they don’t use in their select flower-only suppliment.

As much as I like that product, I’m not here to endorse anything. The trust fall bit of it is the key to the intuitive image.

“When things seem terrible, it can feel impossible that they will get better. if the future is too big for a leap of faith, then all you can do is take a trust fall into the present moment.” comes through here.

The “what it is card” is the bouquet. If today isn’t stressed, enjoy the beauty of it. Enjoy the moment. If you are feeling stressed, try to sort out what of the stress is rooted in the past and future. Try to see the present moment for what it is. Look around you. Are you in life threatening danger? If you are – then you aren’t reading this. If that’s the case you have bigger things to do than read blogs and scroll social media. So if you are seeing this, stop: Take in this moment for what it is. Stop and smell the flowers the bouquet card is offering. It also reminds me of that quote attributed to Mark Twain “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, the most of which never happened.”

What it is is not so bad when you eliminate the parts that are actually worries about a future that may never happen.

What to do is the Clover card. It is a card of luck. The doing is simple in this case. Simple, but easier said than done when anxiety is raging. Acknowledging and accepting that things aren’t so bad and are getting better. When anxiety or sadness is raging in your brain, it’s hard to feel as lucky as you really are.

Acknowledging your luck attracts it to you.

Tell yourself that you are lucky.

Blind, rote, repeated affirmations even when you don’t feel them isn’t going to magically manifest the thing you want. They won’t do that even if you do feel it. But what that can do is bring your feelings and your energy into better alignment with the flow of things and help you find what you really need, even if it is different from your original desires and expectations.

You are lucky, it is just a matter of finding it. And it may look like something you never in a million years imagined.

Thanks for reading!

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deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler c 2021 all rights reserved used with permissions on Llywellynpublishing.com

Cheating at Choosing

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Week Ahead Tarot is an interactive reading. Pause the video & choose your card. Restart the video to see the reveal, and get your reading in the description below the video. YouTube and the socials get a very short reading. The reading in the TaoCraftTarot.com blog, the Ko-Fi blog and the Substack newsletter are usually a little longer, with more background explanation and detail.

Q: Why do you show the cards at the end? Isn’t there some way to hide it? It goes so fast to pause. Isn’t it cheating if I choose my card after I see them both?

A: In Shorts, Reels, Tik Toks, or any short format video, it can be hard to read the instructions and pause in time before the cards are flipped. Especially if you are on an older device or have some lag for any reason.

But that’s just a glitch in the experience, not a problem with the reading itself.

Contrary to what you may think, seeing the card first isn’t cheating….it’s doing it the hard way. Choosing between two cards you can’t see operates on pure intuition and instinct almost subconsciously. When you can see the cards, you have to use your intuition more consciously and deliberately.

If you choose after you see the pictures, you suddenly have a bigger intuitive job to do because you add in the options of BOTH or NEITHER.

Of course, no matter when you choose, in the end you still have to use discernment along with intuition. You have to decide if the message is right for you or not. You have to decide whether you should take it to heart of let it go by.

The important thing is that all of the ways of choosing a Tarot card are equally valid, because in the end, it is still YOU making the choice.

Thanks so much for your question!

See you at the next sip!

Week Ahead Tarot: Steady Face Value

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Pause the video if you want more time to think. Think of a question, or simply think of guidance for the week ahead. Choose your card, then restart the video to see the reveal and get your reading below:

KING OF PENTACLES: If life has been chaotic, this is a reassurance that stability will slowly return. If life has been steady, don’t force change. All is as it should be, at least for now.

Take advantage of the steady, low key energy environment to get mental, emotional and spiritual rest as much as physical rest. This isn’t Hanged Man major arcana energy. This isn’t a sign of unhealthy stagnation no matter how frustrated you may feel with the pace that things are moving. Take advantage of this pace before things pick up and start moving – perhaps sooner than you think.

SIX OF CUPS: Consider taking things at face value this week. For better or worse, sometimes things really are what they are.

In other words, don’t make things harder than they really are. It’s OK for things to be easy. That doesn’t make them less valuable. People tend to complicate things or make them harder because we think the hard work or complexity somehow makes the result more valuable somehow. That very tendency is why simple and easy with no ulterior motives is a beautiful thing. Enjoy it when comes along.

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See you at the next sip!