The only real oracle is human intuition. We made the machines that make the art.
public domain image via creative commons
I’m as cyberpunk as the next Tarot reader.
Probably way more so. There are reasons why I thrive doing email readings. They are my best work, tbh.
But there are also reasons why I love using the Lofi Girl / Lofi Chill aesthetic to describe my Tarot style. I can be all synthwave and cyberspace but still keep the lo-fi human touch which is the whole point of Tarot in the first place.
78 cards raised to the power of near infinite combinations of any one shuffle raised to the power of layout position times the different layout possibilities – is a bigger number than I can calculate. Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great explainer on TikTok about the shuffle thing.
Tarot excels at dealing with human thoughts and emotions but there are some things about the human condition and external environment that early Tarot readers could never imagine.
Imagine what will come to be that is off the far front of OUR radar.
If I were to create a brand new Tarot card, it’d be technology of some sort. Maybe a cyberpunk looking radio telescope. I think some oracle decks already have cards like that.
Artificial Intelligence and machine made art is one thing early Tarot readers probably never envisioned If they imagined it, I’m guessing it would have been understood in a different context. I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Their magic is our AI.
We made the machines that make the art. I wonder if anyone has made a Tarot deck with ChatGPT yet. If not, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.
Regardless of who or what or how the cards are generated, the one, the only, the true oracle is pure human intuition. Cards are just tools no matter what tools humans use to create the cards.
As far as I know, you can’t mimic intuition with a bot.
All I know is that I don’t use any of it.
Email is as technical as it gets with my readings. The readings will always be me, a keyboard and a photo of your unique real-world actual physical cards in a real world, actual, physical card layout – no AI at all.
The problem with AI right now is not so much the technology as the copyright. I actually like the AI generated aesthetic that is everywhere on social media these days. I’d love to have book covers look like that – but I’d feel terrible taking a REAL artist’s creation for a book cover without their knowledge or consent. So I haven’t even played with AI for fun yet.
I know the amount of work it takes to write something and write it well. I respect copyrights and intellectual property and expect the same in return. While the posts on Sage Sips blog are non-derivative noncommercial attribution share alike creative commons 4.0 licensed. That means you can quote and share all you like so long as you give me credit for writing it, don’t change it and don’t charge money for it. Fair enough, right? Especially considering everything here is my own creation, my own hard work – no AI help at all.
Next up is the three card Energy Path reading for the week that will post on Monday, but for now it’s time for my lo-fi human self to go get another cup of coffee.
Yesterday was quite a week as they say. I personally am very glad to see the weekend get here. I’m also still into the idea of revisiting the energy path reading from Monday to see if and how anything has unfolded now that it is, thankfully, Friday. Four days is nothing so the changes won’t be dramatic, ever.
Time does keep turning, just like the Wheel major arcana card. “Churning” comes to mind as well as an active old-fashioned water wheel or the paddle wheel of an old Mississppi River steam boat.
On Monday, the “growing energy” card in the pathway layout was the Wheel. It is by nature a churning, changing, dynamic kind of energy. I think the Wheel’s energy has increased a bit over the past few days. My sense of it for the next few days life will be on the energetic side. This is a major arcana card, after all. I hear (‘hear’ meaning the intuition comes as words instead of mental images) “dating” “social” – in other words it is a good time to get out and around and be social if you are feeling it.
Spirit, energy, life, the universe and everything doesn’t care about our expectations much less our calendars and schedules. In the bigger picture of it all, four days really is next to nothing in the flow of time and energy. Let’s look at a bigger pattern that we’ve seen over the past few weeks of readings (August 21-28, August 28-September 9)
First there was Moon card energy both up front and underlying these current cards. There were a series of water and tide images. Tides are literally associated with the actual moon, so that certainly fits the card. First we were given the image of “slack water” that wasn’t moving much, then the tide turned and flowed inward, and now I get the image of an outward flowing tide, which would match that social, outward, dating and fun energy that came through a moment ago.
This week we have the Wheel card, which is a card of change. That part of the Wheel connects with the “natural cycles” meaning of the Moon card. The cycles meaning has been the dominant moon card meaning this whole time, and the wheel card is validating that. The wheel card is all about change, but also luck, good fortune, taking action so it gives an even stronger “the tide has turned” feeling. The Wheel takes the softer, gentler ‘natural cycles’ Moon energy and makes it much more active, energetic, churning. The tide not only has turned, but it is picking up speed.
Continuing with the water and ocean analogy, the idea of “undercurrent” comes through here. I get the feeling that a subset of us is still flowing inward, with an energy of deep introspection and a need for alone time to sit with difficult emotions and circumstances still exists. In my mind’s eye I see the Five of Cups again and now also the Hermit card.
So as always, follow and trust your own instincts. Allow what your emotions and body is telling you it needs. If you feel pulled to be out and about and are in the mood for a light, fun weekend then by all means indulge if you can. By the same token, if you feel gloomy and introspective, don’t fight it. Sitting with that side of things helps us to acknowledge, process and let go in a healthy way.
Weirdly, I get a sense that this won’t break along the expected introvert/extrovert personality lines or along any sort of pop culture stereotypical lines. It feels very individual with a mental image of mixed grains of salt and pepper. The best way I can describe the feeling is that this weekend may be a good chance of each individual of us to make friends with our inner opposite. Channel your inner Barbie – or inner Wednesday Addams – as the case may be.
No matter which side of the yin yang symbol you are feeling the most, have a good weekend! Next up: a new Energy Path reading for the week of September 11-18 will post on Monday.
See you at the next sip!
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Today – back to the Alley. One of the many things I love about The Alleyman’s Tarot is the way Seven Dane Asmund not only gives broad permission for the deck to be customized by the purchaser, but it was intended for that, which perfectly fits the herd of cats that is Tarot readers at large. The whole point of the deck being mis-matched and eclectic from the very start is so cards can be added and subtracted and made into something entirely unique and intensely personalized to the reader using it. A master artist’s skill is evident in any medium, but the experience is synergistically and exponentially elevated for everyone when superior tools are used. It’s like the relationship between a master painter and superior pigments, a master chef and the freshest ingredients, or a master violinist and a Stradivarius violin.
My thing has been to separate the traditional-structure Tarot cards from the “Strange Suit” and “Other Arcana” cards. When they arrive, I’ll add the Alleyway Secret Oracle cards from the more recent Publishing Goblin LLC deck and use the sum total for our Odinsday Oracle posts. As always I’m grateful for permission to use the cards here and in social media posts.
This particular card is the “Traitor” from the mid-1800s Grand Etteilla deck in the French National Library.
The weird thing is that I’m in a little bit of an “I got nothin'” place with the card even though it speaks volumes to me on a personal extended family thing that I’m not going to talk about here because privacy (btw – I go just as hard protecting YOUR privacy, even with the ASK ME ANYTHING questions that are answered in the blog)
It doesn’t help that this is such a succinct, straightforward card. It reminds me of Corban Dallas’ one word answers in the Ruby Rhod scene.
The card is just what it says. Someone’s trust has been betrayed. Are you the betrayed or the betrayer? Where have you made mistakes and misteps either in placing your trust or allowing trust to be placed in you?
Today’s oracle Traitor resonates with Monday’s Five of Cups
No matter which direction it flows, disappointment and betrayal are difficult emotions to process. They are hard mistakes to learn from and all the more painful is there is choice or deliberate action as any part of the situation.
Sometimes you just have to sit with those feelings, experience the whole thing, maybe even wallow for a short while in order to reach a place where you can let the emotions go and things can start to change for the better.
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Hello and welcome to the Energy Path reading for the week of September 4 – 11. I’m glad you are here.
Change and cycles are still a thing this week, but in a different way. It feels like it has moved from a general environment thing to being more personal advice. The lingering Moon card energy from the past few weeks feels like it has turned a corner, ebb is beginning to flow. The mental image here is outgoing tide, not at all the “slack water” energy from a few weeks ago.
At the same time there is emphasis on change. Now it has shifted to a more intense, personal, evolutionary change more than broad, gentle, slow, tectonic shift natural cycles.
Two other things come to mind, generally.
First, we are responsible for who we are now. Yes, life has been hard. Yes, you have experienced trauma of all sorts. Yet, you can heal, you can rise again, you can overcome. Destruction becomes disappointment becomes release.
It gets better when you get to the point where you can, at last, let it go.
“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts
Second, as I listen to my favorite darkwave playlist-
If we choose who we are now, why do I and others choose dark, goth-ish, witchy, INTP, neon cyberpunk self-expression.
Yes, I said choose.
We could be all bright and karen and hot girl summer if we wanted to do that – but we don’t.
And we are doing right by ourselves and our souls and for society at large by doing so. I am reminded of the adage that religion is for people who want to avoid hell while spirituality is for those who have already been there. Perhaps the kindest people are the ones unafraid of the dark because they have walked there so often before.
Sometimes, the most revolutionary thing you can do for your shadow side is to admit it exists.
Why revel in what some call darkness? Consider the alternative: false, toxic positivism.
The Ten of Swords truthfully and directly acknowledges our injuries and our circumstances. The figure stays face down and flat to allow the profound change of either death or healing to begin.
This phase is fading. We’ve been down, so to speak, but the tide is turning. It is time to once again rise.
We rise, not fully transformed, but with lingering disappointment. Traces of old experience can cling. Now is a time of contemplation, of coming to understand what happened and is happening. Swords may be intellect and action, with a certain physicality to it all, if not from our physical person then from our social environment. The Five of Cups is about the emotional aftermath of whatever the Ten of Swords represents for you.
Growing energies are the Wheel. This is the change of the death card plus the cyclic nature of the Moon card plus the transformation energy of the Magician card all rolled into one. We are coming to a potent time of change, and a potent time of choosing the person we will be five minutes from now.
We are under no obligation to be the person we were before but we are under every obligation to choose who we will become five minutes from now.
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The Lenormand series begins Wednesday September 20 in honor of the Autumnal Equinox.
Two days ago was a “blue moon.” It’s not common, but it’s not spectacular. It’s not something that is going to grab you by the nose and make you look. A blue moon is just two full moons in the same calendar month. It is a subtle thing because most of us go through life not knowing what phase the moon is in on any given night. No matter what the cool social media graphics show, the moon is the same color it always is.
It was also a “super” moon. Google “perigee” and “apogee.” Orbits aren’t perfect circles. They are off a little, just a tiny bit ovalish and wobbly. Sometimes the moon passes just a little bit closer to earth and seems a tiny bit big-ish because of it. That’s a so-called super moon — any full moon during a close perigee kind of orbit.
These little details don’t happen often, and they both happen at the same time less often, but it is still one of those natural cycles we’ve been talking about. It’ll be a while, but there will be another super blue moon in time.
Super moons and blue moons are slow and subtle things. So are tides and seasons and the growth of trees. That’s the kind of changing and shifting energy that has been around lately. Slow, gradual, gentle change but change nonetheless. Even continental drift will get you to the other side of the planet eventually.
I suspect energies will move on come Monday’s Energy Path reading. It feels like the gentle cycle change has peaked and is drifting beyond. Here I again I intuitively hear the song “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Beyond Thunderdome)” It seems like energies are gently moving beyond thunderdome, not back to paradise.
Queen of Bombs: Denying the darkness has never lit a candle.
I don’t know if it was Odin’s day, but it was a day.
Enduring comfort is an illusion. Nothing is certain. It isn’t pretty or pleasant, but neither is life. Not all of the time, anyway.
To deny the realities of life is as toxic and dangerous as any other risk or challenge life brings – perhaps more so because of its disguises. The most dangerous disguise of denial is that of comfort.
Tarot is labeled occult and evil, usually by those who wish to wrap us all in the paralytic comfort of their own delusions and desperation for control. Tarot has has dark and violent imagery representing the darker sides of human nature because darkness exists and Tarot is meant to help us cope with it, perhaps even thrive in it.
Denying the darkness has never lit a candle.
The Queen of Bombs comforts us not through glassy eyed and fanatical devotion to an impossible ideal, but by reminding us of the fleeting moments and reminding us of the endless human capacity to believe it just might be OK in time after all.
The Queen of Bombs card was created by Seven Dane Asmund for the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck. Deck used with permission.
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Major arcana energy is right in the middle of it.
You know that moon energy that has been lingering the past few weeks? The same message is here but in a more direct, confrontational way. Major arcana cards tend to be more energetic, urgent, profound, far reaching…you name it.
The literal full moon is in two days. I chalk that up to a good old fashioned Jungian sychronicity – a meaningful coincidence. The Moon card has shifted to the Death card, but the energy of change remains.
As we all know from watching the Simpsons, the death card isn’t literal death…it is a big change. It’s not ‘you are going to get hit by a bus’ death, it is the death of an old view, action, persona…the “old” you that makes way for a new you. This is the ‘natural cycle’ energy from the past few week’s Moon card and the ‘only the empty cup can be filled’ energy we talked about last week but with the volume turned up to 11.
The cup is brimming, and is soon to turn over. The moon is nearly full, it’s time for tides to turn. This week feels like a tipping point of some sort.
Maybe it is the outrageously loud pavement cutting and water line work that is going on in front of my house right now, but I have a twitchy, gut churning ‘bad feeling about this’ worthy of Princess Leia. Something is up somewhere, but I don’t know what and I don’t know when. All I can do is sit here and take my own advice.
Fading energy: Queen of Pentacles, reversed. The Queen of Pentacles in any orientation is about nurturing. Often it is about nurturing yourself to preserve your capacity to help and nurture others. The reversal makes it feel like a reminder to let others nurture you. We all need a little care. If you don’t even have the reserves to care for yourself, allow others to help. Just ask nicely. It’s that simple. The fading energy here may be ours. It doesn’t feel like a go-getter, entrepreneurial kind of week. Astrology might blame it on the Mercury in the microwave phenomenon – it feels like a bigger pattern, more of a tectonic shift than a zippy little optical illusion.
Current Energy: Death. The funky mojo energy reminds me of the beginning of covid to be honest. Maybe we are finally shifting out of that phase of human history. It doesn’t feel quite like impending doom, but a sea change of some sort. Sea change is a good way to put it…it connects with the moon cycle, ebb and flow imagery that has been so prominent lately. The phrase “Brave New World” comes to mind, although it doesn’t feel like an Aldus Huxley reference at all. The unknown can be gut-twistingly frightening. Maybe that is the bell ringing resonant energy that is going on here. We are finally moving out of that storm, cleaned up a little of the mess and are being forced to face facts. Everything has changed and will never be the same again.
I’m going to go put “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Beyond Thunderdome)” on loop. Maybe we are looking at the unknown beyond Thunderdome so to speak. Ah – there it is – “I wonder when we are ever gonna change, change Living under the fear, ’til nothing else remains.” Is this going to be fear or freedom for us? I suspect it will be whichever we choose.
Growing energy: Five of Pentacles
It’s interesting that the Pentacles are the only minor arcana cards showing this week. It’s right back to that hunker down and be practical vibe from 2020. Maybe this really is the unknown other side. Again, the sense of this card as fearful or freeing is again up to us to our choice.
The card also brings to mind a TikTok I saw yesterday. I forget the creator, it was something survival. It was a very sped up video of someone who dug a hole and built a survival shelter out of branches and dry grass & mud daub. They even dug out a fireplace (about the size of a small cooler) complete with chimney.
I looked like a totally warm, dry Hobbit hole when it was done.
The Five of Pentacles is about seeking shelter in a storm.
You can focus on the storm or you can focus on the sanctuary that is available for you to take. Again, our choice.
I ‘hear’ “wrap your wisdom around you like a cloak.” Sheltering through a storm means gathering in, yin, not pushing, not being ostentatious. But it also means being happy that shelter exists to take.
Sometimes humble but sturdy and reliable is a wonderful thing. Look for those kinds of things and take whatever shelter you need this week.
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Next up – Wednesday “Odinsday Oracle” – not because I’m not particularly Norse pagan but I am, however, fond of alliteration and Neil Gaimon novels.
This has been a learning experience for me – for you, too, I hope.
I think there is more to take away from this than just dice & image meanings.
This series has been a proof of concept experience: the REAL oracle is our human intuition. Tools and amplifiers like dice, cards, tea leaves, charms, chicken bones or whatever are truly just that. These things and techniques are portals, energizers and amplifiers that help us to access and communicate our own innate intuition and psychic ability better. Because they have a similar function in support of our innate intuition, different oracles can be learned and used in similar ways. There is a great deal of overlap on the energy / intuitive level despite surface differences.
Consciousness and the human experience is expansive and too enormous for any one oracle to encapsulate everything for everyone. The exponential combinations of a handful of cards or dice come close. There are 138 sides in the dice set, rolling 22 dice – if you calculate it out, you get a number so big I don’t even know how to name it. Still, we can learn to work within that enormity and use these intuition helpers in the same way we learn anything. Learning an oracle tool can be logical, methodical and intuitive all at the same time.
We’ve dug down through the layers starting with the individual images on the dice, the meanings associated with the individual dice cubes. In the last post, we talked about connecting all of those things.
The foundation goes full circle. Once you dig down to the nitty-gritty and build up all of the layers of meaning, you have to knit it all together. Think of language – it’s no coincidence we call these things readings. We’ve learned words (side images) and we’ve learned the syntax and grammar (dice, lord cards) now it’s time to make some sentences. It’s time to take this whole project and make it make sense and be use-able. A reading takes all of the digging and layerering and glues it all together into some sort of cohesive whole. THAT is the hardest part. The level of difficulty increases exponentially with each moving part in a reading and the trillions of potential combinations in the case of a 22 dice roll. That is why genuine psychics still exist – anyone can learn to do this, but not everyone has the knack or desire to do all of that digging and layering and gluing. If you pay for an authentic professional reading, you are getting real artistry and skill.
This is also why I cap my Tarot layouts at 7 cards. Larger layouts, like the Celtic Cross or a full 22 dice throw are certainly DO-able, I just find them unwieldy, potentially contradictory and just plain overkill. Why use a chainsaw when all you need is a pair of scissors?
Here is how I’m going to do this…it might not 100% align with the method described in the guide book, but I’m taking artistic liberty since I’m only using a portion of the dice instead of the full roll described.
Since the reading cloth image is a circle, and the dice can potentially orient in any direction of those 365 degrees, I’m going to read the image as-is, no consideration to reversals as you would in Tarot when the cards are all aligned along a single axis.
The dice on the “core” area hold more immediate importance and strength compared to the dice in the outer areas. You all know how I feel about predictions, so tying this to time just doesn’t work for me. I used this side of the reading cloth because as I was setting up for the video, this side felt most right – perhaps most needed by the most people of those who watch and read this. Rather than past, present, future and fated, I think of this in terms of strength of the energy’s influence: Core is the strongest then fated, future, present and past in descending order of influence. Yes, that is very much like the fading-current-growing energy card positions that I wrote into my Tarot layout. I’ve used it for years, and it. Just. Works. It makes sense to continue that proven foundation in this new oracle method.
Since all of the dice fell in the main center circle, that’s as far as I’ll take it. The guidebook talks about how to handle dice on the outer portions of the reading cloth or that fall off of the cloth or table altogether. I leave that for you to figure out if you are interested in getting a set of dice and reading for yourself.
Of the two dice that fell in the core circle, the slightly higher one, relative to where I’m sitting, most catches my attention. It is the grey relations dice on the “alone” face. It shows a single person in a bubble.
The guide book divides the interpretation of any die between when the die lands in the core and when it is elsewhere. In the core, the “alone” face speaks to the querent being the sole focus of the reading (which is my policy for all readings anyway.) This interpretation is a validation for me of something that has been niggling at me for the past few posts – this really is an intensely focused, intimate, personal, individual oracle. This oracle tool isn’t well suited to the at-large collective energy readings of the type we do here with Tarot cards. This is a fantastic tool and technique, but for private readings, not blog readings.
The other core is the action die. When we first rolled it, we saw the “judgment” face with scales and a lot of justice energy. This is the “sacrifice” face, intended (especially at the core) to represent something large and difficult that is being released or a big sacrifice that was made to gain something currently in the querent’s life. Seven Dane Asmund cautions that it “is likely to be a gut wrenching reading. Be prepared.”
Next in level of intensity, we have two dice in the “fated” area. The one on the right catches my attention the most of the two. That is the Elements die on the “wind” face and it relates to a fickle, difficult or changeable person or situation. I get an eight of wands sort of energy here – things up in the air, out of our control, and it is a matter of waiting to see where things land before we can assess and react.
The other high energy “fated” die is the Goblin on the “obsession” face. The guidebook mentions how this die is very often modified or characterized by nearby dice. In this case, the fickle, changeable, difficult, up in the air,beyond reach, not under our control thing has been top of mind, perhaps too much. Taken together with the sacrifice die face – we get a “let it go” message.
The next tier of energy, “present” gives us the same face of the Summer die that we first saw, “gain.” This die is off alone and gives a stand-alone vibe. It feels simple and good and an omen of good fortune – this is a good energy time for paying attention to your creativity and livelihood, especially if the two intersect somehow. All good vibes with that one.
The lowest energy brings the obstacles dice on the emergence face which edges out the Alley die and its “scavenge” face which feels very much on its way out of the door. Of those two the energy definitely lies with the “obstacles” die and its “emergence” image.
The image depicts escape from obstacles, or from a mental or emotional trap. This “getting unstuck” feeling resonates with Hanged Man in reverse in Tarot. There is also a similarity to the five of swords in Tarot with this “overcoming obstacles” energy, especially as Matt Evans drew the five of swords for the Witches Tarot deck. There is also a bit of the Queen of Swords in the way the die relates to “recognizing your power in the moment and rising up beyond what has kept you from feeling free” as the oracle author puts it.
Being in this low key position on the cloth, whether you look at it as time related or not, reminds us that breaking free, picking up the mantle of our power, living free and true to ourselves is not a one time event but instead is an ongoing process.
And there if feels like the energy steps back bringing this reading to a conclusion.
Once again, many thanks to Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC for permission to use his excellent Tarot, dice and oracle cards in this blog and associated social media.
In a few weeks we’ll start a new “learn with me” series looking at the Lenormand Tarot. I’ll be using the Healing Light Lenomand deck under the “free teaching” permissions granted by the publisher https://www.llewellyn.com/about/permissions_tarot.php
Newletter / digest will be on Medium later today. No “weekend shif” Friday post this week. Next up, it seems is next week’s energy path reading.
Thank you so much for reading today and following along with this first “learn with me” series.
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