It doesn’t chase after anything. Yet, just being itself, a magnet attracts and sticks with the just-right things. It’s a quiet process, but a powerful one. Watching, waiting, just sitting there letting your light shine in the universe is a powerful something to do, possessed of great optimism. Although they are outwardly quiet, confidence, optimism, contentment, and intention can be very energetically loud.
“My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud”
Henry Rollins
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Knight of Wands (the current situation, left) The time requires action. Boundaries are getting blurred and need reinforced. It is a good environment for rediscovery of your strengths and magic.
Three of Wands (next step forward, right) Watch. Asses. Know where the boundaries are and reinforce them where needed. Evaluating and planning IS action.
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund. Used with permissions.
Thank you to Dan Harris for inspiring this layout. I highly recommend his books and Substack.
Don’t vibe with your collective energy card? Private distance readings are open. No appointment needed for email or paper.
PAGE OF WANDS: “Know thyself” Act natural. Do you, and the path of least resistance will nudge you in the right direction.
That isn’t to say we should melt and fade at the first sign of a challenge. There is a lot to be said for persistence. At the same time, insanity is defined as doing the same thing persistently while expecting a different result. Sometimes roadblocks are there for a reason.
As a general rule, walking in harmony with the real you is the best way to go
THREE OF WANDS: Make plans, but keep your eyes open for unexpected opportunities. Good things come to those who wait.
Another way to say it is don’t sleepwalk through this thing on your mine (today, tomorrow, the upcoming week, a relationship, a career – whatever you had on your mind when you picked your card) Observe deeply. Little details might be the bright light bulb you need to light the way.
FIVE OF WANDS: Life is never all rainbows and roses. Train. Know what to do when the inevitable bad day happens for things to be ok in the end. Charge your batteries before the storm.
A paramedic instructor once said “prepare for the emergency and the emergency goes away.” When you are ready for life’s little stresses, the stress can go away even if the situation doesn’t fundamentally change.
Thanks for watching the video and coming to the blog for a few extra thoughts.
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee – or whatever you are sipping at the moment.
Updated today from a September 2020 post
Heart of Stars Tarot, copyright 2007 Thom Pham, used with permission
Three of Wands. Yes – again.
Different deck, different day, same card. A cool thing happened; about an hour after I filmed the card draw above, I did a private one card reading with a different deck (Steampunk, their favorite) and wouldn’t you know it – Three of Wands. This card is really trying to get our attention.
It also gives us a little insight into how Tarot can be such an endlessly useful tool for something as complex as spiritual guidance or the human psychology. The math is pretty convincing. Let’s start with a one card daily meditation reading. You have one card position raised to the power of 78 possible cards, raised to the power of all the possible keywords and meanings that have been attached to each card over the years, raised to the power of our limitless imagination and intuition.
Even if you leave out the intuition bit, and just look at card numbers, the cards are pretty amazing. Here – let a real expert explain this:
Now, let’s consider that kind of calculation for a full Tarot reading. Never mind a classic 10 card Celtic Cross – let’s just consider my 5 card Modern Oracle layout.
For five layout positions, regardless of the meaning you assign to that position, the first card could be any card from the entire deck. The first card has 78 possible results. The second position has the whole deck minus the first card, which gives 77 possibilities. The third position has the whole deck minus the first two cards for 76 possibilities and so on
If I’m using the online calculator correctly, that means there are over 2 million different card combinations for any given five card layout.
Now add all of the possible card meanings into that mix.
Then raise it all to the infinite possibilities that pure intuition can lend to the reading.
Now you know why we charge the rates that we do. The more cards in a reading, the more complex it becomes, and the more insight, wisdom and raw Tarot experience it takes to make sense out of it all for a client. When you add in ethical, professional conduct – $35 for a five card email reading is insanely affordable.
That is beside the point. The point is that when you consider the mind-boggling number of possible card combinations, a repeating card in disparate circumstances sustained over time is a card definitely worthy of our attention.
The Three of Wands is often associated with things like watchfulness, active waiting, observation, proper timing, or vigilance.
Recently, the energy seemed to flow toward the idea of watching for the right timing, watching for events to happen that would in turn prompt you to action.
Today, the energy is more toward the vigilance end of things. This feeling of watchfulness isn’t timed to a particular action. It isn’t about timing your action just right. It has a more general sense.
This is also an energy connecting the card to the idea of healthy boundary setting. First discover where your best boundaries ARE, then the Three of Wands encourages you to watch over them, maintain them and defend them. Words like “periphery” and “vigilance” come to mind. Based on current events, turbulent times are likely on the horizon. The Three of Wands card is further reminding us to guard our energy and mental health. It is always better to over-prepare than to under-react to such things, be it literal storms or political ones.
Thank you for reading this updated post from the archives. I hope you will use the search bar on the right hand side of the page (or the bottom of the page on mobile) and browse the archives. There are six years of Tarot readings here, more over on “Sage’s Other Words” so chances are you can find something interesting.
The day job is back on a typical schedule so I’m hopeful to have a new “Choose Your Card” Tarot reading for you on Monday.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
A new plan is in motion and you can play a part.
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the three of wands from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.
This card, along with a couple of others, suits August energy particularly well -at least here in the northern hemisphere. The seven of pentacles reminds us to be hands-off and let nature do its thing. The eight of wands is hints at hands that are tied. Things are in progress but out of your control and there is nothing you can do until the penny drops and the arrows land.
The three of wands has an outward appearance of waiting, like the other cards, but with a greater degree of mental alertness and engagement. This card signifies a time of expansion and growth, but with inner attention as much as outward motion. In that sense, it is a little bit like a Chariot light card. It’s akin to the major arcana’s chariot card but less intense. It’s watching your homemade caramel sauce like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. It isn’t slam into the side of a mountain level stuff like the test-pilot chariot card, but it is about being alert and watchful. It’s like chef Anne Burrel says. You can go “from master to disaster” in a few seconds if you aren’t careful.
The three of wands lets us know that stuff is happening. It is a wide horizon, expansive energy. There is plenty of room here to flex your intellectual muscle and emotional maturity. This is a big open mental space where you can fuse logic and intuition into foresight.
Personally, I identify with the “stuff is happening” part of this. I’m streamlining my email readings so people can send their questions and order the reading in one seamless process when you use the commissions menu on the ko-fi page. I hope to have more ebooks coming online as the Fall and Winter progress. I’m working on some options that will hopefully allow me to inflation proof my private reading prices, although I still need your support for this blog and podcast through the shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees on the ko-fi page.
Please stay tuned for all of those announcements. BUT for today I have something else in mind. Today is August 1, mid season between summer solstice and the fall equinox, and that seems like an auspicious time, and the three of wands seems like an auspicious card to introduce card cuts into all of my readings.
Cutting the cards is a Tarot tradition. Sometimes it is just a part of shuffling the deck. I like the tradition of cutting the cards and letting the client choose which portion of the deck we use to draw the cards. I’ve done this forever for in-person readings. It really does bring your intuition and your energy into the reading in a more powerful way. Even though the connection isn’t affected by time or distance, when we are working individually at a distance through email readings or collectively at a distance through the blog and podcast, it still helps to forge some sort of connection. Of course the most potent connection is your decision to read the blog, listen to the podcast, or purchase a private reading. Making a connection with an individual reading is easy. In person or online we talk about your question or whatever it is that prompted you to get the reading in the first place. Individual email readings are just as easy. Whenever I see your name and question (or permission for an open reading) in print, that’s when the connection clicks into place.
I’ve been experimenting with making the connection to blog and podcast and you tube readings more personal. You might have seen those in the “You Choose Interactive” posts. It clicked, but not as well as I’d hoped even with embellishments like crystal or shapes or something else to help the choice besides “left, center, or right.”
If individual choice is awkward, let’s try a collaborative choice. You choose. We’ll try left, center anr right again but as a group.
Want to play along? Just put a comment somewhere with your choice of left, center or right. Drop it here on the blog, over on the you tube channel, or on any of the socials (I’ll put links in the podcast episode description). In upcoming videos and posts, I’ll cut the deck into three piles. Tell me whether you want me to draw the short sip card from the left, center or right. I’ll watch the comments, and whenever there is a clear majority, that’s the cut I’ll use for the next week or so in the short sip readings. I’ll put the call out for a new cut, and you can comment your choice again. And so it goes. Even if you choice isn’t in the majority, the whole process is energized by your effort and intentions, making it better for everyone. I wonder what Carl Jung and his collective unconscious theory would say about this exercise? Put a little energy in, get a more energized reading back. Fair enough, right?
Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to take your time, browse the blog, and please leave a comment with your choice of deck stack for the next few readings. Heck, comment about anything in the blog / cast. Or go all out and ask a question! I won’t promise it will all make it into the blog, but all questions are welcome. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I’ll see you at the next sip!
a free intuition building exercise to practice your one card meditation
urgh.
Just for the record, I’m very pro universal health care.
I’ve been all day insurance wrangling, sitting in waiting rooms and (after spending too many contentious adversarial years with a certain personality mis-matched primary care physician) feeling defensive, stressed and on-guard. Everyone today was so freaking nice – not at all what I expected. And all just for routine maintenance for my weirdo rare-ish genetic thing. I could be Storm. Or Blink. Or Cypher. Or Professor X. Or something. But nooooooo I get to be Clot Woman. Sheesh.
I just don’t have it in me for a reading today, much less the youtube & podcast thing, even with text to speech. I know I said I’m shifting the Turnovers to be a membership* feature, but how would y’all feel about a bonus flip flop? I’ll sip the coffee, and you read the card. Pick the meaning that best suits you. If you have any questions, the professors door (aka the comments) is open
If you want to learn how to do one card daily meditation readings for yourself, it’s covered in detail in my ebook PeaceTarot available for instant pdf download in the ko-fi shop. As a double extra bonus, all proceeds from the purchase of PeaceTarot from the ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, who are giving medical care under the truly worst conditions and aren’t sitting here b*tching about our meat-grinder juggernaut price-gouging money-grubbing American healthcare system.
Tarot Turnovers is a good way to practice. Unleash your intuition. Today’s random card is….
long range planning
scouting, observing the situation
launching a new phase of a project
bright future
good prospects, your ship will come in
expansion, new frontiers
what does your instinct tell you?
what images come to mind as you look at the card?
any songs, tv, movie or book references pop to mind?
So what do you think?
*Tarot Table memberships include: three card members -only “pathway through the month” reading, newsletter, exclusive Tarot Turnovers not available in the free blog, members-only special offers and giveaways, and one private “Path through the year” Tarot reading by email when you join.
**NEW “Inner Circle” membership level – get your seat at the Tarot Table with all of those benefits PLUS a private one card Tarot reading by email whenever you want up to three per month. Join HERE
Sorry to go silent for a couple of days. This is the part we talked about back at the new year where you have to make a plan before life can blow it apart. That was the plan. This is blowing it part. Although I have to admit – I like the SpaceX description “unplanned rapid disassembly on the launch pad” much better.
BUT all is well and is well and back on target after just one of those weeks, so here we are at another Sunday Tarot Turnover. This is a blog exclusive intuition building exercise where I turn the card reading over to you. I use one of my my real-world decks (public domain image used here instead of photo) to draw a card for today. It’s followed by a list of keywords and interpretations from the blog archives or inspired by favorite sources coming soon to a suggested reading list.
MOST important is YOUR own interpretation. What does the card mean to you? What is your inner intuition tell you when prompted by the card?
Today: Three of Wands.
“unique inspiration and assistance” – Ted Andrews
“keep a weather eye on the horizon” – common idiom, attributed to sailors
look to the future – associated with positive future outcomes
If you have any questions about this card or intuition/Tarot in general, feel free to drop them in the comments. Mostly I answer questions in the blog rather than individually, so we all can benefit. You never know who your question might also help! Don’t worry – it’ll still be private. I never use names or identifying information in any blog post.
YOU choose how this video / reading is to be used. A look at the week ahead, guidance for your day, or guidance about a particular question or topic….you choose.
BUT it works best if you have your purpose clearly in mind when you choose your card.
Take a minute, or choose on impulse. If you want more time to think, pause the video and restart when you are ready to see your card revealed and hear the interpretation.
If you would like additional clarity, private readings are available by email HERE, no appointment needed – order anytime! I’m open for the holidays, but delivery may take longer than usual.
Thank you so much for reading and watching! I really appreciate your support.
your tips to the virtual coffee mug support this free blog and the podcast
When I was 4, dad woke me up one midnight to watch men walk on the moon. I wanted to be a cowgirl nurse astronaut in space and campaigned hard for a later bedtime to watch Apollo launches. I’ve been a card carrying member of The Planetary Society, starting in 1987. These days, I’ll settle for being a Firefly fan and watching SpaceX launches.
Today as I filmed the card draw and write this, news coverage of the Blue Origin flight with William Shatner aboard is playing in the background. The word “frontiers” came to mind along with the Peter Gabriel song “Games Without Frontiers.
It was a joyride. It was pure tourism. The only science in it was developing the vehicle and procedures. After watching NASA and SpaceX watching this felt like watching baseball players squirt champagne while wearing safety goggles after just watching the Stanley Cup final. But then Mr. Shatner started talking.
As much as I adore science and technology, I equally adore language and powerful communication. The color, the universe, the thinness, the fragility: I can’t begin to sum it up. I urge you all to please, find a tape, listen to him.
The frontier line is different for everyone. Everyone has different skills, experiences, resources.
The experience of that frontier line, wherever it falls relative to other people’s is different as well. For some people, skydiving might be as easy as a trip to the grocery store, for others a trip to the grocery store is as terrifying as skydiving.
It’s one thing for humanity to send scientists and explorers to the frontier. It’s important to fling a poet at space every now and then too. They are the ones who can bring the frontier back to the rest of us.
There us a feeling of newness and if expanding horizons. I think I see why the feeling to reach for the Heart of Stars deck (by Thom Pham, all rights reserved, used with pefmission). Superman ties today’s card to yesterday.
Remember how the Devil card hinted that it is far better to put your energy into being happy alone than to tie yourself in knots just for the sake of being in a relationship? It is better to be alone than to make your partner bear the weight of the relationship by hoping they’ll change or be different this time. It’s ok to be counterculture especially if that gives you the wherewithal to be loving and compassionate yo yourself and to others. Plus, perhaps more importantly, self confidence is sexy. Dare to be comfortable in your own skin and happy in this present moment.
The “superperson” in this case is someone who has conqured that. Imagine it us someone who has eeked out just a little more of that self assured, right-here-happy energy. This might be a hint of new love to come or a deepening of live already here.
The three of wands has a watching quality. Everyone wants to be seen and heard. Attention nourishes all types of love. Attention is a potent aphrodesiac if that is the kind of mutual relationship you are in.
Give your full attention to all those you love the most.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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