Throw Back 2021: Ogres

It’s that retrospective, year-in-review time of, ahem, year.

I used to think it was fun and sentimental. You know, reflection, introspection, personal growth and all that. But now I’m older and wiser. It’s also easy content. Who am I to argue with that logic? (She says as she shuffles off for another cup of spiced coffed and a cranberry scone for breakfast)

Today we’re throwing back to April. If you are more in a mood to look forward, “Year Ahead” readings are available by email on the home page. Memberships get both an exclusive “month ahead reading” on the ko-fi blog and a private year ahead reading by email when you join.

That being said, here is “Growing Ogres” from April 2021.

Shrek: ….ogres are like onions

Donkey: They stink?

….

Shrek: No! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers

from “Shrek” copyright 2001 Dreamworks Pictures, quote via imdb.com

Layers mean complexity. Layers apply to all sorts of things that are actually more complex than they seem at first glance; ogres, onions, cakes and – you guessed it – Tarot.

Reading Tarot for yourself is actually quite simple. In a couple of hours I could teach you to do good DIY readings for yourself. (Related: PeaceTarot ebook)

Reading for other people is another story. High level professional readings are, like onions and ogres, more complex than it seems on the surface. That’s the whole point of them. A professional reading can gives you extra layers of insight and experience that you can’t get alone. Two heads are better than one. Two eyes give depth perception (related post: parallax) The two of us working together gives your reading another layer of understanding.

Sometimes layers talk about authenticity. Sometimes you have to peel back a few layers to get to the real heart of the matter. We’ve talked about authenticity and public Tarot practice before, after my Modern Oracle Tarot work was re-branded to TaoCraft Tarot (related: what’s in a name, Shakespear’s Roses, Spell Your Name)

That’s all well and good, but consider another aspect of layers: growing new ones. Interestingly, actual onions grow on the inside. New layers are added at the core while older outside layers get dry and thin and ultimately fall away. In this, onions give us another useful metaphor.

In the medical field, and no doubt many other professions, continuing education is a condition of licensure and employment. You have to keep learning and keep current if you want to keep working. Whether it is required or not, whether it is career related or not, lifelong learning is a respected mark of excellence. Learning isn’t just formal education. Learning comes from experience and experimentation and the living of life. Artists’ work evolves over time. Any person’s point of view can evolve over time.

And so, the “Modern Oracle” layout is evolving. I’m calling abort on the video / text hybrid format. It was an experiment that failed, and I’ve learned something important from it.

Remember how deeper layers are often perceived as more authentic and how old layers of growing onions turn papery and fall off? It’s time for the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle layouts to evolve, to become more authentic, to show more of their inner complexity. The video hybrid isn’t the way for that to happen. The names of layout card positions are changing. It’s a tiny detail that you may not even notice from your side of the Tarot table. On my side of the table it is important shift in mindset. This allows me to fully and authentically follow what intuition and spirit shows me.

I wrote the initial layout meanings to create a bridge from old fashioned, predict-the-future, fortune telling layouts to a more modern advice, guidance and empowerment reading. I wrote the Modern Oracle layouts specifically to show the power of your choices over your future. Cards that once were called “past, present and future” in the old style became “lessons from the past, current situation, and moving forward.” Predicting the future evolved into making an action plan.

Now it will go one step further. I in my minds’s eye, I see a reading in terms of dynamic energy flows, not a concrete road through time. As Modern Oracle layouts become TaoCraft layouts, we will let go of time and predictions entirely. If the Modern Oracle layout was like GPS map for your path ahead, the TaoCraft layout is like a GPS traffic update with a weather report.

Card 1, lessons from the past, will become Fading Energies, symbolizing energies that are moving away from you. These are things that need less of your attention.

Card 2, current situation, will become Current Energies, the energies that are strongest, and deal with things that need your attention in this moment.

Card 3, moving forward will become Growing Energies, energies moving toward you, or gaining influence in the path you’ve currently chosen. It still isn’t predictive. It is still intended to guide you, help you prepare for possible conditions ahead. Think of it like a weather report. It doesn’t tell you exactly what will happen to you during your day, but it can give you the chance of rain or sun while it happens.

Card 4 will remain Choices. It is still placed under the current energies card and at the center of the layout because that is still the place of power. Empowering your choices is still the heart of the reading. The choices card will take on a more advisory tone than before. Instead of suggesting how to persist or how change your path, it focuses on whether changing or whether staying the course is the wisest thing to do.

Card 5 is still Alternative Path just like before, showing the most open alternative path you if you decide a change is needed.

Card 6 Helping Energies and card 7 Potential Challenges are the same as always, and speak to exactly what the name implies.

Long story short, if you are dead set on a specific “accurate” prediction, you aren’t going to like the new TaoCraft layouts. If that’s the case, you need the Zombie Cat yes/no readings like we did the other day. Even then, you have to realize it isn’t 100%.

,

The Founder of the Feast

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: The Founder of the Feast with the King of Pentacles

Thank you for reading, watching and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Today’s card is the King of Pentacles

Saying thank you to the people who work so that you can eat and live is the best grace that you can say.

In A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit proposes a toast to Mr. Scrooge, the “founder of the feast” which prompts a room sized rant about how terrible Scrooge treats Bob. It’s a valid point and necessary to the story.

But I wonder – who thanked Bob for working that awful job that let them put a flaming dessert on the table? Or thanked Mrs. Cratchit for cooking a big family meal in a nineteenth century kitchen?

When I was young, the extended family would get together for Christmas and my uncle, the evangelical minister would pray over the food in dramatic fashion for what seemed like hours when all I wanted to do was dive in to the ham and grandma’s cornbread dressing. To his credit, in the middle of the conspicuous baby jeebus rhetoric, he always managed to throw in a one sentence thanks to the “hands that prepared” the food.

To my mind that is where the real grace was said.

If you work and provide food and shelter – thank you. If you cook a meal – thank you. If you work in grocery stores, deliver the mail, give entertainment, or do anything to make anything work and help the tribe of humankind survive the longest night – thank you.

Effortless Holidays 2021

Effortless holiday 2021

Time and time and time and time again.

As time unspools and years have passed, Taoist philosophy matches my lived experience. Again, again and again.

I kinda love the secular version of American ‘christmas’ these days. It’s a giant yin-yang symbol of dynamic opposites. It can be a bright or as dim as you want – or need – it to be. On one hand it can be tinsel and twinkle lights and eggnog and excess and ebullience and pure joy of being alive. On the other it can be quiet and candle light and a warm blanket and music and curling up with a good book – also the pure joy of being alive.

The holiday doesn’t have to be any one thing all the way through. We of privilege have the privilege of sampling all aspects of the holiday season like a buffet. With it being a season rather than a day, there is enough time for us to be as raucous or as contemplative as our mood and means allow.

Time.

Time is an interesting thing in this part of the calendar year. As the year turns from one to another, people naturally seem to look both forward and backward at the same time. It’s a little like those little chameleons that can move their eyes independently of each other. Who but humans could invent a holiday that on some levels turns them into time lizards. Why not? We invented both holidays and calendars.

Time is a seamless whole, just like space. The universe is one big chunk of a thing. So is time. Christmas, New Year’s Day and the like are days like any other except for the meaning we hang on them like twinkle lights on Clark Griswold’s roof.

The beautiful part of having a holiday season instead of a holiday day is that those expectations and meanings can stay on the level of decorations and not become definitions, deadlines or stress.

Time after time, year after year, the holidays (solstice / yule for me, Christmas for my birth family) prove the Tao Te Ching is right: “nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Whatever gets done is fine.

Holidays are effortless this and every year. Telling the people you love that you love them is all that really needs accomplished.

Thank you all for reading the blog and listening to the podcast this year. I wish you – yes, YOU – a very happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous holiday season.

Solstice #Short: making magic

Thank you as always for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. Email Tarot both short and long are open for the holidays, and your support is always greatly appreciated!

Today is something new. I wrote this layout inspired by both the solstice and a trend I’ve seen on Tarot Instagram. I’ve seen a variety of people suggest shuffling the deck then finding a particular card related to a particular topic and then reading the card or cards adjacent to it to get your particular message. For example, thinking of general guidance, you might shuffle then look through the deck for the Magician card, and look to the card right behind it for insight into what you are manifesting or transforming or calling to you in this moment. I’ve seen a half dozen variations of that. Here is mine.

Today where I am is the winter solstice. Dark moves away a tiny bit and the sun steps forward again. Of course, in the southern hemisphere it’s reversed where daytime has peaked and night will advance a bit. So when we get to the cards, read them according to your location. For your winter solstice, look for the sun card for energies moving toward you and read the card right behind it. At the same time, look for the Moon card and read the card behind it to see the energies that are beginning to move away from you. For the summer solstice, reverse the direction – use sun for energies moving away and the moon for energies moving toward you.

Whichever hemisphere you are in today, you can adapt the context to your location.

Since I’m in a sunny but frosty winter place, I’ll write this from a winter solstice perspective and leave it to our southern friends to adjust for their location.

Moon / Queen of cups: reliance on intuition and instinct

Sun/ Seven of Pentacles: results of labors, return of energies

I won’t belabor the point since this is supposed to the a Tarot short, but basically, intuition steps back and practical application steps forward, but only a little bit of each. It is the solstice, and the underlying foundation of the whole thing is, naturallly, a balance.

I see this as being the same essential message for BOTH hemispheres now that I think about it for a minute. The advice is to use, trust and apply intuition, but not too heavily. Don’t use intuition to the exclusion of practical action.

On the other hand, don’t just shotgun out a lot of hard work and effort without some degree of thoughtful guidance. It will pay off. You will reap what you sow, but you’ll reap even more if you take the time, effort and though to sow good seeds and care for the garden in a “work smarter not harder” sort of way.

It’s a balance of intention and effort. It’s a balance of making and manifesting. It’s solstice. It’s magic.

Sunday Tarot Turnover: Go With What You Know

In this blog exclusive intuition building exercise – you do the card reading. A card is drawn at random, then I’ll give you a list of meanings from past readings that I’ve done. Use your own instincts to guide you to the best meaning or interpretation for you today. Feel free to search this blog or the original Tarotbytes archive for old posts related to the card for more intuition prompts and interpretation ideas.

  • Study, taking classes, formal education of any kind
  • new certifications to advance your career
  • informal learn – any new skill or hobby
  • learning personal growth or self development
  • learn how to ground, center, relax
  • review or revisit old knowledge as if it were for the first time

Random Bitmoji

Hello everyone!

Holiday schedule? Did I actually say that?? Yeah – nah. Email readings are OPEN all season long because they don’t have schedule either. Order anytime, 24/7 , no appointment needed. Otherwise, things are going to be pretty random around here from now until Jan 3 or so.

Happy happy everyone!

Throw Way Back Thursday

While life is at elfcon-1 and the holidays are what they are, thought it might be fun to do a throw back Thursday. I don’t do that often, since Tarot is a very present-moment kind of thing. You can’t step into the same energy flow twice to paraphrase that old saying about a river.

Here is a post I wrote on my old Modern Oracle Tarotbytes blog from 2010, just for the fun of it.

Parralax – May 27, 2010 (Tarotbytes blog, ModernOracle.wordpress.com)

“Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 1, Camera 2” ~ Wayne’s World 2

Ever play with that trick of eyesight? Close one eye, and hold up a pencil so it lines up with an object in the distance. Then switch eyes and the pencil seems to jump to one side. Things don’t line up the same way.

In astronomy, this is called parallax. In biology, it’s called binocular vision where the brain combines the two slightly different views from our two eyesto give us depth perception. it’s the camera 1 / camera 2 slight difference in viewpoint allows us to perceive distance. Two eyes lets us visually live in three dimensions. It helps us to not walk into objects and learn our environment the hard way.

A similar idea is true in Tarot and psychic work. Getting a reading isn’t predicting the future…it is getting a second look, a separate viewpoint that lets us see with greater clarity, depth and understanding. It helps us be a bit more perceptive, and not have to do everything the hard way.

Two third-eyes are better than one.

Even those of us who do readings will sometimes GET a professional reading in order to improve our understanding and fill in any blind spots.

I like to think that psychics consulting psychics is a bit like binocular vision…two views that can be fused together into a higher quality, more useful vision. It is a bit like the very large array of radio telescopes made famous in the movie “Contact”…each person, psychic or not, has their own individual “radio telescope” except that we call it intuition. When we communicate with another antenna, it gives a result that is like having a dish as large as the distance between them.

If one eye is closed, then depth perception doesn’t work. If one telescope is down, the array doesn’t work as well. We each bring our part to a reading. You bring your insight too. Working together, we double our view. Depending on a psychic, or a reading to “predict” the future, or what will happen is third-eye-blind.

Work together, by combining your knowing and insight with the reading, taking responsibility for your actions and decisions…working with the psychic that way, you can see farther into the cosmos.

Wishing you open-eyed clarity