For several weeks we’ve been learning about the Lenormand Tarot deck the same way I learned Oracle and RWS Tarot cards back in the ’90s: card by card by card. One card daily meditations is an excellent way to learn to read Tarot in larger layouts.
Just as a reminder, Lenormand Tarot card readings do not use or consider reversals. That is significant with today’s cards because:
Latitude.
In RWS deck readings, intuition leads the way when deciding if and how a reversal is significant. Lenormand eliminates that intuitive opportunity, but replaces it with another. It has another way to give you a little latitude to use your intuition.
Today the playing card inset takes the lead on our card, the Heart.
In Lenormand, the playing card inset is what gives us an easy, safe structured way to learn to read with pure intuition. In RWS, you can practice pure intuition when you decide if an how to use a reversal. In Lenormand, you can practice pure intuition when you decide if and how much the playing card inset factors into the card’s message in a given reading. Both scenarios give us a defined safe space to practice intuition that isn’t guided by established card meanings.
You know how multiple choice tests in school always seemed easier than being faced with a blank sheet of paper and being asked to write an essay about something? It’s a bit of the same thing here. Using your intuition to decide between two defined things (reverse vs upright, is the inset a factor or not) is easier than a free form psychic reading without the help of cards or anything.
That isnt’t to say that you should discount the main image when the inset steps up as the stronger energy. They always work together. Think about ballroom dancing: One person leads, but both partners dance. Dancing well together, the two dancers make something wonderful. And so it is with Lenormand images and their playing card insets.
Today’s heart card is just what you expect – love, romance, commitment. Christopher Butler, this deck’s author, puts it with the ring card to mean marriage or committed partnership, fully fitting with the European culture that gave us both Lenormand and visconti-sforza (Marseilles, RWS) based decks.
The Heart card is very analogous to the two of cups.
The Jack is knight energy, hearts connect with cups, so we have some elements of the knight of cups here, too. That brings a more flirty, fickle, but active element to it. To my eye, the active, action piece of it is in the forefront.
Put it all together and we have our advice for today: ACT on the love you feel. Compassion and kindness is love put into action.
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A kitten is perfect for the Page of Wands today. The page is typically associated with youth and exuberance…we’ve talked about that new graduate vibe before.
Today the page is taking a sip from the six of cups too. There is a sense of the six’s innocence, guilelessness, utter transparency and default setting of seeing things as they are and taking them at face value.
It’s as good of a way as any to take on a routine day.
Please come back tomorrow as we look at a new Lenormand Tarot card as the Learn With Me series continues.
The Zombie Cat free reading offer is CLOSED, but you can always leave a Tarot question in the comments or “ask me anything” page to get a free Tarot answer in the blog.
Since nobody voiced an opinion one way or another on any platform, I’ll make the command decision.
The captain is turning the ship.
We are going back to frequent, daily-ish one card Tarot contemplations to go with our daily coffee sips. Learn with me and oracle card posts will continue on Wednesdays.
If somebody (anybody! please!) posts a question in the comments or through the “ask me anything” page, I’ll post a bigger Tarot reading in reply.
I’m discontinuing the Substack newsletter AGAIN. It just isn’t necessary. Instead, I hope you’ll just straight up follow the free blog, join the membership level on ko-fi or follow Sage Words Tarot on social media. You can get the same free collective energy readings in all of those places.
Socials will be quiet later this week while I’m out larking about and having fun with husband and the padawan. Email readings are always OPEN to order. Delivery times might be delayed if you order during nights (U.S. eastern time) on weekends, on U.S. holidays or during previously scheduled larking about with the family.
Are you overwhelmed – or are you just busy being somebody’s superhero?
You have every right to say no. You are just as free to save the day. It’s your choice.
Once you know that “no” exists, your superpowers can take flight.
Anybody want a one card Lenormand Tarot reading for free? Leave a comment with your topic or question. Your reading will post in the blog (with no identifying information of course – nothing to connect it to you) Offer ends December 31, 2023.
You don’t often start a sunny November and the holiday season with a cautionary tale, but here we are.
Maybe it’s because the social media collective declared an early spooky season this year in response to the apocalyptic heat this summer, and we are all feeling a little fatigue at the end of it. I get a strange sense of melancholy blowing in the wind today, which seems an odd way to start the Holiday season. It’s all turkey dinners and holiday shopping this month – I’ve already heard Carol of the Bells in advertising. That’s hard core.
A sunny Thursday like this doesn’t often start with a feeling of caution but here we are.
Today’s card is the king of pentacles, in reverse (meaning the card turned over upside down relative to the person doing the reading.)
“So what?” you might ask.
Every Tarot reader handles reversals in their own way. Some always reverse the meaning into ‘darker’ meanings. Some make it into the opposite of the upright meaning. Some disregard them outright. As we are learning in the Wednesday “Learn With Me: Lenormand” series, Lenormand readings handle reversals by not handling them. They just flip the card and go on as usual.
In true Taoism influenced style, I do a blend of both. The cards embody both light and dark, positive and negative aspects all the time anyway. I take all of those aspects into consideration with every reading regardless of the card’s orientation. When a reversal comes along, I let intuition lead. Either it is a hint that the card’s layout position is blocked or turbulent or somehow problematic OR it can feel energetically neutral and I just flip it upright and move on like the Lenormand folks do.
In this case, it feels like it is telling us something.
The phrase “risky buiseness” comes through. The King of Pentacles can reflect material success, a breadwinner, a provider, a good payoff for hard work.
Reversed, it can mean that sort of prosperity flow can get jumbled up.
To be literal about it – don’t get carried away this holiday season. Don’t go into debt or live beyond your means just for the sake of social expectations about how holidays are “supposed” to be celebrated, whatever your chosen holiday may be.
Here, I am reminded of a meme…”tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.” I have a sense that this meme might be particularly true this year. We’ve all been through a heckuva thing with the pandemic and such. We have an opportunity to re-define our Holidays. Let go of the peer pressure from dead people and make this year into something heartfelt more than material.
The suit of coins / pentacles is focused on the material realm, career, wealth and so on – but this is Tarot. The whole point of Tarot is understanding and spirituality, not physical realm predictions. Tarot isn’t made for physical realm except where physical and mental/emotional/spiritual all meet. The whole suit has esoteric threads intertwined with its real-world practicality. The whole suit has a “money can’t buy happiness” element to it.
My hunch that is what the inverted King is telling us. This isn’t the year for materialistic celebrations OR for forced traditions. Friendsgiving is a thing. This is a year for found family and perhaps a chance to let go of toxic or forced traditions that bow to the peer pressure from generations past.
That isn’t to say be overly austere. Celebrate. Indulge in the traditions and treats that speak to your heart. But don’t spend money or energy or emotion necessarily forcing yourself (or trying to coerce anyone else) into following old traditions that no longer serve or excesses that are no longer needed. Do, but do the truly meaningful, heartfelt things. Do, but let go of the forced, habitual, or ostentatious. Mind your bank account – both physical and emotional – this holiday season.
Thank you so much for reading!
There won’t be a newsletter next week or US Thanksgiving week.
In fact, the blogs and socials will go quiet November 9 – 13 and again November 22 – 27. I’m setting a pretty low bar for the holidays myself, but I do need to finish that sweater I’m knitting for a gift, sooo….
Merry Elfcon 5 for 2023!
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Let’s take a closer look at another card from my new Lenormand Tarot deck.
The more I work with this deck, the more it feels like a real-talk oracle card, really a thing of its own. Not a toxic positive overly optimistic oracle deck that sees the world through rose colored glasses, certainly, but not the depth and complexity that the 78 RWS or the 130+ card Alleyman’s Tarot. A bigger deck with smaller layouts seems to be the sweet spot for my intuition.
See, we learned something right there.
Finding – and frequently using – your intuitive comfort zone is not only OK but it is a good idea to better readings for yourself in the end. BUT at the same time learning, growing, and expanding that comfort zone is equally important. How else are you going to know what your optimum intuition conditions ARE?
That little bit of meta-analysis aside, let’s look at today’s card, the Snake.
All of the animal related ideas from the Bear last week still apply, just swap out the bear characteristics for snake characteristics.
Which I may not be super objective about.
I was born in the year of the wood snake – the green snake. After I learned about Taoism, feng shui, I ching and the like, I’ve always resonated with my chinese astrology symbol just as much if not more than my western Pisces sun sign. Although I don’t know anything about sidereal vs tropical astrology, all I know is that I’m Pisces in both, which in itself is supposed to mean something in itself, I think. I’ll leave that to the astrology adepts of you to figure out. But back to Snake.
The Christopher Butler guidebook to this Healing Light Lenormand deck reads the Snake as someone deceptive with malicious intent (Hey!)
Like owls, snakes are feared in some cultures, revered in others. Makes sense, because in the real world the old nope rope may be either harmless or lethal and you have to know something about them to be able to tell which is which. That’s not the snake being deceptive. It’s up to you to know “Red touches black, no worries for Jack. Red touches yellow, dangerous fellow.” and so on.
Knowledge arms you against deception, both literally and figuratively. But that’s another story.
Chinese astrology, the restaurant place mat edition, reflects the real world duality. Snake year people can be stubborn, opinionated, intimidating with a heaping helping of hubris to go with it. But at the same time they are viewed as intelligent, wise, creative and intuitive.
Or, as the Sirius Black character says in one of the Harry Potter books “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
Part of enlarging our comfort zone, part of learning new things is associating them with things we know well. Just like with the oracle dice from the last “Learn With Me” series I associate this with a few RWS Tarot cards, the Devil and the Three of Swords. Both acknowledge the malevolent side of human nature, cautions us to be on guard as well as asking us to be honest with ourselves about our deepest motives. Are we being deceptive, or are we being deceived.
As for the playing card inset, the queen of clubs, in my system of reading playing cards (I intend to write about that in an upcoming book) the Queen of Clubs is analogous to the Queen of Wands with a message of nurturing and self-care. Watching your back and taking care for your safety is, indeed, self-care.is
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But I will, begrudgingly, admit they sometimes have utility.
Most of the time, pithy little adages are either a shorthand reminder of something bigger. They also can also be empty headed, hollow, shallow and avoid the depth and complexity of a situation.
The Reagan era “Just say no” campaign was exactly the latter.
But today, in a vastly different context, it actually has a little bit of utility.
Today’s card is the six of inking balls (“Holy inkballs, Batman!) from the Strange Suit of the Alleyman’s Tarot deck (Jost Amman Deck, Museum of Tarot and Playing Cards)
The artwork says it all about this card. It asks who is the dunk-er and who is the dunk-ee and that it probably doesn’t matter because everyone is getting drenched anyway.
At heart, the card is about feeling overwhelmed. When you feel out of control, or just way out of your depth, who put you there? Or, more importantly, how do you prevent winding up there the next time?
Just say no has a place. It isn’t in dealing with the complexities of chemical dependence but it has everything to do with setting healthy boundaries.
You are allowed to say no. Just plain no. If it makes you feel better to give some explanation or excuse, go ahead. But you have every right not to overextend yourself. You have every right to take care of yourself, regardless of what other people’s wants, needs, or rampant self-indulgence may be.
If you don’t say no, or allow no to be said to you, then things can get real inky and real messy real quick.
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Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot Deck by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission Publishing Goblin LLC
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“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
There are two words that make me cringe a little when I get them in a Tarot question: “will” and “when.”
Predictions and time are knotty subjects in psychic work. Mostly because they don’t legitimately exist. Tarot isn’t about predicting the future. They are about CREATING the future through your choices and your actions.
Tarot doesn’t’ tell you what is going to happen in life; Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
Predictions are actually a scientific thing. A scientific prediction is essentially a pronouncement about what will happen based on existing data and past results. For example, we can predict where in the sky Mars will be a year from now based on Newton’s laws of gravity, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, existing observations and so on. As I understand it, that is the kind ofprediction that a law of physics or scientific principle has to be able to make in order for the principle to be considered valid within the scientific method.
Skeptics spend a great deal of time and energy bashing and demeaning “psychic predictions” in the name of science. Unlike overt scams, ego trips and outlandish fiction, authentic psychic predictions are essentially the same as the scientific kind. The psychic reader is an objective observer who is knowledgeable about symbolism and human nature. Because of that wider perspective the reader can see trends that the person getting the reading may not see. A Tarot reader can predict where things are headed in a relationship just like a scientist can predict where Mars is headed in the sky. The biggest difference that is that psychic predictions are based in non-linear logic, experience with human behavior and psychology instead of linear logic and numerical data.
That is looking at it all from a very superficial, everyday experience point of view. This is Isaac Newton kind of stuff. It’s like predicting that when an apple detaches from a tree, it will fall down. What if we go a just a little bit more modern with it?
Think Schrodinger’s Cat.
Schrodinger’s Cat is a thought experiment that everyone seems to know. Often it’s used to take a swipe at non-scientific or spiritual thinking. If you want to understand the hard core science side of Schrodinger’s Cat, Star Talk with Dr. Degrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice is MWHA *chef’s kiss*. Watch it. You are welcome.
I’m no physicist but let me take a stab at this, more for the analogy of it than for the science of it. As Dr. Degrasse Tyson hints, this experiment is really about stuff we can’t observe and we can’t know. Tarot is one way people could talk about stuff we can’t know in a time long before quantum physics. The Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck dates back to the 1440s, predating both Galileo and Newton. The discovery of quantum physics doesn’t mean that Newton’s laws are untrue. The existence of objective science doesn’t mean subjective experiences of human intuition is untrue.
Thought experiments rely on your imagination. Intuition relies on your imagination. So it seems reasonable to use a thought experiment to talk about psychic predictions.
But back to the Schrodinger thing.
In the thought experiment, a poor unsuspecting cat from an era when no one cared about animal welfare was put in a box with a vial of poison gas. There is a trigger on the vial connected to a radioactive molecule that has a 50-50 random chance of breaking down within the next hour. During that hour we cannot know and we cannot predict what the result is going to be. Either the molecule decays and triggers the poison, or it doesn’t. Until the observation is made and the whole thing has happened the cat can potentially wind up in either condition. During the time that the experiment is in progress, the cat is both dead and alive up until the moment when we look in the box to see what happened.
Once the experiment is set up and started, the cat could come out of it alive or not. But why not both or neither? Why are those possibilities excluded when so much of life is on a spectrum like electromagnetic energy? Why are other possibilities excluded when so little of life is a strict dichotomy? Disappearing Cat or Zombie Cat could happen…it’s possible. As I understand the BBC Horizon Series’ program “Parallel Universes” (hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku, based on his book “Parallel Worlds”) anything and everything is possible. Some things are, however, wildly unlikely within the laws of physics of our particular universe.
Multiple universes is one possible explanation of it all. The cat is both…it just does it in different universes. It can’t be both dead and alive in the same universe.
Why not? I ask the computer screen every time I see the Minute Physics video about multiple universes. Why not a zombie cat that is both or a disappearing cat that is neither?
When the moment of discovery is still in the future, the possibility and attendant levels of probability exists for all outcomes. In the mysterious and undetermined future, all conditions potentially exist, even our wildly unlikely disappearing or undead pet. Can you predict which way THAT is headed using nothing but your brain and handful of Tarot cards? If you “predict” the more likely dead vs alive construct, is that psychic or science? If you predict Zombie Cat, is that quackery or was the intuitive vision simply dialed into a different part of a far flung multiverse?
Zombie Cat may well exist out there. We don’t know because multiverses, as the video says, is unproven. No-cat and Zombie Cat might be out there, but they just don’t make the jump from possible to probable to IS, at least not in this world. All potentials exists until the possibility becomes “entangled” with our reality and the moment becomes NOW instead of future, and then slips instantly into the past. Now and Past are fully collapsed probability waves. They exist. Ska-doosh! It’s a done deal with nothing to predict. The future on the other hand, that’s a different animal than any of our imaginary cats.
Now, just to make things really interesting, let’s introduce Zombie Cat to Alice the Vampire.
In the movie Twilight, the psychic vampire Alice could see the future insofar as people have decided what they want to do. If someone changes their mind or changes their actions, then her vision changes. She can predict but with uncertainty. Her predictions are predicated on the course people are on, not any one fixed outcome. Alice the vampire’s visions and Zombie Cat’s existence are a matter of probability, not “accurate prediction.” And so it is with Tarot and psychic readings.
Let’s say our imaginary cat has human-like intelligence and has a choice rather than being a victim of circumstance as in the classic thought experiment. What if there was something the cat could think or do or meow or some action it could take that could detach the vial from its molecular decay trigger?
Now how do you make predictions under that set of conditions?
Imagine your psychic vision was of a dead cat which had a 50% mathematical probability in the experiment. What if the cat heard you make that “psychic prediction” and disconnected the trigger when it otherwise wouldn’t have acted that way? Was the the initial prediction wrong?
Now would be a good time to google “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Will you get that job?
I dunno.
Did you apply for it? Update your resume? Schedule an interview? Learned good interview skills? Has the person doing the hiring made any decisions or taken any actions that have connected the possibility to reality?
A reading can’t predict a specific outcome, but it can give you advice and it can help you make decisions that nudge the probabilities in your favor such as be flexible (4 of swords), emphasize your skills and experience (The Emperor) or show you’d be a hard working team player (3 of coins). A good advice reading is like the psychic yelling at the cat in the thought experiment box to disconnect the trigger and improve its chances of survival.
When will you get married?
I dunno.
But in the meantime you can do social things that make you happy (3 of cups) be clear in your mind about the kind of person and marriage you really want (The Lovers) and engage with the life you have now as happily as you can (10 of pentacles)
The future is just as wibbly-wobbly as the Doctor told us. But Tarot can give you ideas about how to bring love and happiness of all types into your life.
Psychics, Tarot and intuition are intended to help you make the best possible choices along the way, not predict what lies at the end of the road.
If you do nothing, take no advice, make no choices, then it is all just a coin toss. Your might wind up with anything from a living happy cat to unalived cat right up to a Zombie Cat. But who knows? Maybe a friendly Tarot-reading Zombie Cat might not be such a bad thing.
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