I’m taking over the squirrel rave this time. Here’s the metaphorical playlist.
For the rest of October (longer if you guys tell me you like it) I’m reverting back to my old format from the Tarotbytes days on Modern Oracle: One card daily meditation Tarot readings for the collective energy.
That has a few advantages as I see it:
It will let me focus on some of the family / meatspace things I have coming up over the next few weeks without going on a full blog & social media hiatus.
It fits the new Reels/Shorts/TikTok social media environment better than the longer pathway readings.
It also fits the Sage Sips “brand” – Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee (or whatever you are sipping this time of day). I sip coffee every morning, so why not have a little Tarot to go with it?
The offer of free Zombie Cat Tarot readings for anyone brave enough to leave a comment asking for one (or use the ask me anything page to ask for one) still stands until midnight October 31, 2023. Just give me a nickname to use to protect your privacy, tell me your question for the feline and you get a free Zombie Cat reading in the blog. Entertainment only – you know the drill. Zombie Cat’s Tarot readings are 100% guaranteed to contain words and have a 50% chance of being dead wrong.
If you are interested in a not-metaphorical playlist, I made “Haunt 23” on my now-defunct podcast Spotify page for you, just for funsies. Happy Halloween!
Squirrel meme image via google search, believed public domain
Social Media Update: With the advent of Threads, I spend most of my scroll time there these days. Threads and Instagram is the best place to actually interact. You are welcome to stop by and say hello. I post on FB, Tumblr, and TikTok, but don’t interact there very much. I will warn you that the Threads account has become a combination of Tarot posts and my ex-birdsite political and religious voidscreaming. But you probably know by now that secular humanism, Taoism, witchcraft, progressive/liberal politics and lgbtdq ally-ship is a big part of who I am and influences what I do here. If any of those things offend you then we wouldn’t be a good match for a Tarot reading anyway. But rest assured, no matter what you see on the Threads feed, I can set all of that aside and channel in the right energy message for you no matter what it says. That is what 30 years of experience will get for you. There are some advantages to being genX years old.
So what does that have to do with today’s card or Tarot at all? That gnarly online energy IS very much today’s energy and card. The growing energy from Monday has arrived. The Three of Swords has to do with sorrow, heartbreak, loss, pain and betrayal. The keyword betrayal steps forward with the most energy today.
This isn’t a good day to be expansive or ebullient unless the feeling is so strong that your happy emotion bubble can withstand a field of needles. The collective energy today feels prickly like trying to hug a porcupine. You may have all good intentions, the porcupine may be filled with love and kindness, but things are what they are. Being true to yourself and being true to your own nature can also mean facing up to hard realities. Your true self and other people’s true self isn’t always going to blend well. You don’t have to like everybody and not everybody has to like you. Oil is a part of nature. So is vinegar. That doesn’t mean that life has to be salad dressing. To borrow a phrase from Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss. But follow it knowing that not everyone has the same bliss.
Some people by their nature are counter to your nature. Deliberate and malicious or not, intended or not, it can feel like a betrayal when you hoped for some sort of relationship, but nature makes that difficult if not impossible.
There may be good intentions all around, but oil and water, bubbles and porcupines still happen. Some days just aren’t made for trying to make square pegs fit round holes and vice versa. This feels like one of those days.
To paraphrase another writer, John Le Carre, betrayal can only exist in the presence of love. You can only betray – or be betrayed by – those whose opinion you care about. You can’t be jabbed by the porcupines that you don’t try to hug.
Here my mind turns to some of those social media threads I’ve been reading lately. With the evangelical support for right wing politicians and the christian nationalist & “dominion theology” growing in our national awareness (and, arguably, growing as a threat to those of us with interests in Tarot or ANY spiritual path other than theirs)
There can be family betrayals, community betrayals, literal danger to vulnerable groups like our lgbtq loved ones. Like the meme says – you can’t say you love me then vote for someone who hurts me.
The Three of Swords reminds us that protecting oneself from real danger is an act of loving kindness too.
Which brings us back to yet another paraphrase of yet another author, G. Chesterson, who said “a [warrior] fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.”
When religion tears apart families and communities the prickly energy splatters everywhere.
It’s hard to hug a heart that deliberately surrounds itself with swords. It’s ok not to impale yourself on the sharp edges.
Thank you for reading. Heavy energy, heavy ideas today. Thanks for contemplating it all along with me.
Next time: Energy path reading for October 9-15.
The Blog and social media will be on a short hiatus October 14-17, 2023. Email readings are OPEN but may experience delivery delays on those days.
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The general plan is to learn about this Lenormand deck in the same way we recently explored the Publishing Goblin oracle dice and before that my new and much used Alleyman’s Tarot Deck.
There is no teacher quite like experience, especially when it comes to something as subjective and individual as intuition and oracles. The basic strategy over the coming weeks is that I’ll pull a random card (and post the draw on YouTube Shorts. I did that this week but the the technical glitch gremlins got to it)
After the random draw, we’ll read it purely intuitively based on the collective energy of the day – just like we read the collective energies for the week each Monday.
Then I’ll go to the guide book, which in this case is sparse, around a paragraph per card, and summarize what it says.
A word on guide books in general:
Use them as a tool, but not as an authority.
There is no dishonor in finding inspiration when you need it.
Guidebooks are great in situations like this to help you get comfortable with a new deck or technique. Guidebooks are essential when you are very first learning to read cards at all, like the DIY one card meditation readings you learn how to do in my book PeaceTarot.
Even after reading for 30 years, there are still times when I look at a card and get exactly nothing. Tarot readers are human and nobody is perfect. If you hit one of those I-got-nothin’ moments then it is perfectly fine to fall back on either a guidebook or a memorized “meaning” It will prime the pump so speak, and spark the intuition that you need for genuine reading that is of the energy of the moment.
Today’s card is The Dog.
The image on this particular deck is warm and sunny, and I associated it with all of the positive happy energies of the RWS major arcana card The Sun. Dogs are the essence of loyalty and friendship.
Clearly this is a good start for making friends with a new deck.
It has a sense of reciprocity today, too. “To make a friend, be a friend”
In the moment, it feels like making friends with this deck is going to be easy.
The guidebook doesn’t add much, just reiterates the “faithfulness and loyalty”
The guidebook isn’t much help in this little learning project we have going. I may just give the key words in the beginning and just give it an intuitive read from there.
Do you have any thoughts which would be more helpful to you? Comment if you like. Guidebook keywords at the beginning or end?
It’s interesting that the card is connected to the 10 of hearts. You can read the suit of hearts much as you would the suit of cups in the RWS decks. It is about emotion, happiness, closest inner circle relationships….like your closest friends.
PeaceTarot also teaches you how to use playing cards in place of Tarot cards to use the guidebook meanings in PeaceTarot if you prefer playing cards or if you don’t have access to a RWS style Tarot deck. 10 of hearts is equivalent to the 10 of cups, which has to do with happy family and happy (and loyal) relationships. It all fits.
If this card resonates for you today, it is a reminder to appreciate the friends and emotionally close people in your life. Tell them. Show them. Check in with them. Be a friend today.
If you are feeling friendless, befriend yourself. Just be patient and kind. It’s like playing fetch with your favorite doggo…throw some kindness out there and life will fetch it back sooner or later.
Thank you for reading. The short and sweet newsletter for this week will post on Thursday morning.
See you at the next sip!
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entertainment only
Image: author photo of her purchased copy of Healing Light Lenormand by Christoher Butler copyright 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.
It might have immediate blowback, or it might be building foundations or planting seeds that pays off later.
Potential lies in the hands of action.
All of the cards this week are swords. Swords are associated with air and action, intellect, and our relationship with authority, culture or society at large.
The fading energy card is the Page of Swords. Pages are students and learners. With this being in the fading position, it is a clue to a change of phase. It is the end of the beginning. It’s time to put on the big kid underwear and get to work. At some point you have to leave school and do the thing. For many, now is that time. Now is the time to make old efforts pay off, true to the harvest season, lending this card a sense of rapid expansion. The page is supposed to represent a knight in training. Knights can become kings. With these two cards side by side, it gives a feeling of rapid expansion, a rise through ranks, rapid progress after a dely.
Current energy is the king of swords. King cards are protectors and leaders. Again intellect and action mixed. This is a time of head over heart. Kings protect the kingdoms boundaries. This is a hint to set and protect and enforce our boundaries. Insist on respect but give it in equal measure and with equal discipline.
Anything in its extreme contains the seed of its opposite
Rapid expansion can also translate to ‘in over your head’
The growing energy card, the three of swords is a caution against falling prey to your own naivete and inexperience. Know what you don’t know, and know enough to ask for help when its needed to avoid problems. The faster you move, the harder it is to see and avoid pitfalls in time. Heads up. Problems may come at you faster as the week rolls on.
Thank you for reading. Good luck and be careful out there!
Next up: Learn with Me: Lenormand on Wednesday. See you at the next sip!
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author’s photo of public domain Tarot card
When I’m looking at a new deck of Tarot cards, The Pope or Hierophant card is one of the first I’ll look at in order to decide if I want to add it to my collection or not.
Some cards have fairly uniform symbolism across most RWS / Marseilles / Visconti based decks. The Three of Swords is a good example. It almost always involves a heart and three swords – what better way to convey a meaning of heartbreak or betrayal.
The Hierophant card is as draped in religious imagery as you would expect from a medieval European card that is often called the Pope card. The old school cards, to my intuitive eye, are just as rigid, dogmatic and judgmental as their real world counterparts’ reputation. I gravitate to decks that take a different approach to the Hierophant card.
I don’t want that kind of religiosity to be part of my life or work, even in this tiny part. It’s exactly this card that first drew me to the Witches Tarot. Mark Evan’s rendering of Heirophant image captures a very different and entirely valid aspect of the card, one of the keeper of traditions. Evan’s artwork is more grandfatherly, like an old shaman telling stories by a campfire. It’s more of a kindly monk energy than an uptight priest.
The Hierophant in reverse was the growing energy card for Monday’s week-ahead reading. My hunch is that the reversal is significant, even more so if we use a deck that has only one Hierophant card in it. I was using the Alleyman’s Tarot deck at the time, which contains two – the one Monday that the deck author describe as “the good one” which seems to me to read that same as the classic Pope (“the asshole one”) in reverse. To avoid double negatives, let’s look at the Heirphant card as a whole, regardless of whether it turns over reversed or not.
As I see it, this major arcana card has two threads of meaning, just like most of the cards do.
On one hand it can symbolize dogma, strict adherence to tradition, social expectations, fundamentalism. This aspect of the card may be asking you to conform if your natural tendency is to rebel. Not permanently, of course, but more in the sense of playing their game just long enough to get the system to work for you. Pull your hair back, put on the suit, do their expected interview now, so you can live to fight the patriarchy later.
On the other hand, it still symbolizes social expectations, judgment and dogma, but it can advise the opposite, especially when the card is physically reversed like this.
This is a call to free thought.
The energy is still very much like Monday and continues for the weekend.
It is a call to be your fullest self, set aside the restrictions, reclaim the parts of yourself that you gave up in order to fit in and get along. If you are a people-pleaser by nature, this is a good energy environment to finally, once and for all, please yourself instead. Be safe, it is a dangerous world. It is a world (our at least a country – looking at you USA) of increasing hate, religious bigotry and yes, fascism. Still, the radical act of kindness and acceptance actually does exist. There are places where the Pope card really is turned upside down.
Question everything.
Find your tribe.
Your family of heart is waiting.
We love you for who you truly are, even if we haven’t met just yet.
Imagination, visualization, creativity, science and spirituality all live in the same friendly neighborhood. They certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. The places they take us are not always literal, but those imagined places are vital.
Page cards in Tarot symbolize learning, becoming a serious student of something, or the beginning of a new phase like a graduation. Cups cards are intuition and emotion. You wouldn’t expect emotion or intuition to be part of learning or logic or science. In a cosmos as vast as ours, imagination guides our curiosity to what we want to study next and indeed inspires us to study, learn and grow at all – both literally and emotionally.
Imagine the kind of person you want to be – then be it.
Imagine the kind of work you want to do – then study for it.
Imagine being happy, content, and engaged with the life you have right here, right now – then live and experience exactly that.
It’s as easy as having a staring contest with a fish.
Zombie Cat Yes-Or-No readings by email are back for spooky season!
The next stuff:
Revisiting the growing energy card: The Hierophant
New Energy Path Tarot reading on Monday, October 2
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Email readings are my specialty (You get the EXACT same message as you would get in person, maybe even better)
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Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot introduction part 2
Want to try a mini Lenormand Tarot reading for free? Leave a question on the Ask Me Anything page (or in the comments below)*
Ledoux, Jeanne Philiberte; Mlle M. A. Lenormand (1772-1843); The Bowes Museum (public domain)
Let’s meet one of the most famous card readers in history, Marie Lenormand through one of the most respected living Tarot readers, Mary K Greer.
This is only a quick thumbnail sketch about Marie Lenormand and the oracle / Tarot decks named for her. This is based on Mary Greer’s excellent article, the guidebook to the Healing Light Lenormand deck by Christopher Butler and our friend, Wikipedia. By all means, if you would like to learn more please visit and read the source material.
Last week, in part one of this introduction, we talked about being self-taught or self-initiated in Tarot. In a sense, it is unavoidable. Even if you take every class, read every book, only you can interact with Tarot. It is going to be your own unique experience and it is going to be wonderful and it is going to be just as valid as your teacher’s experience. Or mine. Or Marie Lenormand’s.
As best as I can tell from these few sources, Marie Lenormand as as self-taught as any of us. She is said to have received her first cards as a gift from “gypsies” (Butler) who taught her to read the cards. True or not, self-taught or not, Marie Lenormand seems to be a self-made person. Born in 1772 in France, orphaned at a young age and raised in a convent, Marie went on to be author, poet, and fortune teller to the stars and celebrities of the time including Robespierre and Empress Josephine.
As remarkable as Marie Lenormand was as a Tarot reader, it is even more remarkable that Lenormand Tarot we know today has little to do with her except her name.
A larger deck, “La Grand Tableau” was first published shortly after her death in 1843 and the more widely known 36 card “Petit Tableau” came significantly after that. (Wikipedia)
It seems that the Lenormand card decks were more interested in connecting with her fame as much or more than any techniques or particular cards. The Lenormand deck we’ll use in this series is the petite tableau which is based on a popular mid nineteeth century game “the game of hope” by Johann Hechtel (Butler)
While there may be little information about Marie Lenormand’s actual cards and methods, there is information about the how the cards with her name have been used over the past 150 or so years.
The entire deck is laid out in a grid….
And I stopped reading right there.
We just finished with a complex oracle.
Live is messy and complicated enough. I work best with people who want clarity and understanding. That, in my experience, is what oracles are for: clarity, comfort, creative problem solving. Oracles are for cutting through the fog, no a lot of smoke and mirrors. If there are people who can find comfort and clarity with that whole deck approach – have at it.
I’m going to approach the Lenormand deck with the same roll up your sleeves, tuck in and let’s learn this approach that we used with the 22 Oracle Dice and the 130 card plus Alleyman’s Tarot which is the same approach I used to learn Tarot in the first place 30 years ago.
It. Just. Works.
Or at least it works for me. I hope it is helpful to you, too.
Next week, we’ll start exploring one randomly drawn card at a time, connect them by pure intuition to the energy of the day, then coordinate that with the guidebook writer’s interpretation of the card. After a while, we’ll connect the cards using the Energy path and TaoCraft layouts that I wrote. Don’t worry I’m not going to hit you with the potential confusion and contradictions of large layouts. Seven cards is the largest number of cards I use in any reading ever with any deck.
Next week: Let’s do this thing – drawing a Lenormand card.
Tomorrow: weekly newsletter
Friday: revisit the growing energy card for this week, The Hierophant reversed
It’s full-on, for-real spooky season. It’s said that the “veil” between the subtle and physical realms becomes thin this time of year. Theoretically humans are more sensitive to the mystical, mysterious and spiritual.
This week the fading energy is the 10 of cups. Cups are emotion. Tens are the largest and only double digit minor arcana number cards. Emotions have surged. Put in astrology terms, the last full moon in Pisces, the mercury retrograde, something Saturn or another -not my area of expertise – may have had nerves on edge. Everything is out of the gatorade and the microwave isn’t on, so emotions may be a little smoother this week. There is a sense of advice around this card to find peace of mind and peaceful emotions. Cups are associated with the element of water. Where there has been splashing and flailing for some and stagnant slack water for others, things are now moving in a better direction. Let it go, let it flow, go with that flow….all of those nice, rhyme-ish platitudes. Choose your battles. This may not be the time to fight. Find your flow instead of looking for hills to die on.
The current energy is the knight of wands. Wands are fire and can symbolize inner fire, inner passions, spirituality, philosophy. This is a time to stand up for yourself, but opt out of the drama. Don’t find hills to die on, find for your flag to fly on. It is a time of finding yin power – of attraction, transformation. If this were a major arcana card, it’d be the magician. Here I am reminded how in Suzanna Clark’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, the knight of wands was a sign of magic returning to England.
You have no more right to change other people than they have to change you, but you every right to BE you. The mental image of a force field, of energy shields akin to Star Trek or Dune comes here. Knights are self confidence and action. BE is a verb. Be yourself apologetically.
The growing energy is the Hierophant card, in this case from the Minchiate Tarot from the early 1500s in Italy. It has images of monarchy ruling by divine right, but could also be seen as divine inspiration or a muse-like energy. It doesn’t carry the religious imagery of the pope-like Hierophant cards.
This card is a reminder that sometimes it is ok to be a bit of rebel. In these days, it pays to use your head and be safe, but as you are able, allow yourself to follow your own calling, regardless of whether it meets other peoples expectations. Follow your own path, be your own person. The wind may not be at your back for that sort of thing right now, but supportive energies are growing – especially if you actively seek them. Find your tribe. Again, fly your own flag. BE your own person. Honor your own divine calling even if it is counter to the social, political, or religious so-called authorities. Honor your own internal guidance. You are your own best minister. Guidance from your highest self is heard within. Your happiness depends on no one but you.
Internal guidance put humankind on the moon.
Thanks for reading! If you found this reading at all helpful, please consider a private reading or clicking the white mug to support the blog with a virtual coffee. Next up: Learn With Me, Lenormand introduction part 2 coming Wednesday 9/27/23
See you at the next sip!
Alleyman’s Tarot deck used with permission Publishing Goblin LLC
The five of cups was the growing energy card for this week in Monday’s Energy path reading. Now that the week ahead is mostly the week behind and we are looking forward to the weekend, let’s see what’s going on with the growing energy.
The vibe of it feels steady now. Yesterday’s one card reading, the Devil, puts this card into better perspective. The negative connotations of the Five of Cups are sometimes imposed from the outside more than they are experienced from the inside.
It’s the Addams Family. It’s goth.
It’s like seventeenth century philosopher Barauch Spinoza said – any objective thing can be viewed as good, bad or indifferent all at once.
Things that some might consider dark, brooding, melancholy or even evil or devilish, others consider to be their comfort zone. The “dark and melancholy” is a place of comfort and happiness.
Who are we to judge?
It’s far better to ask how you can help rather than just assume something is wrong in the first place.
Today the card brings to mind both the Addams Family and their unabashed enjoyment of their own life and lifestyle – and the Cure song “A Forest”. While I am a Cure fan from way back, I keep mentally hearing the iconic guitar notes, so that must be some sort of intuitive clue, or at least a confirmation of the “indulge your inner goth” vibe of today’s card.
I think the carry away message of all of this is to reassure everyone that you are not a bad person just for having a shoe-gazey emo kind of day.
Even professional performers don’t have to be up and on point every minute of every day. You don’t have to be up and talkative all the time either.
Melancholy and moody is a human experience. It’s practically the definition thereof. Have a good mope if you feel like it.
Just don’t take it out on all the bright and chipper extroverts out there. They can’t help it they are cheerful.
Enjoy your weekend, whatever mood or mode it comes in. Now I’m going to go listen to one of my new favorite goth bands, Vision Video.
Back Monday for a new look at the next week ahead.
See you at the next Sip!
Feeling mopey enough for a private Tarot reading? Distance Tarot is my specialty, and email readings are available to order HERE 24/7 no appointment needed.
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