FOUR OF CUPS (reversed): Upright, this is a card of blocked or complicated communication and unrequited emotions. Reversed, this lets us know that this is a good energy environment to express yourself. Let the emotions flow, let your heart lead the way. Allow the natural flow of things to bring the things you most need to you.
Wayne Dyer describes this as an allowing sort of mindset. The energy, emotion and prosperity of the universe is always flowing. Often it is a matter of allowing ourselves to be a part of it.
I ‘hear’ “blessings flow” which is odd considering how twitchy my exvangelical self gets around religious language. I suspect this abundant, prosperous, joyful sort of energy is what was meant with the phrase “my cup runneth over” Cups can run out, or the pouring withheld (as with the upright sense of the card. Personally I prefer the more infinite and inexhaustible and objective “the universe provides”
We haven’t been seeing very many reversed cards lately, so it is probably worth a word about that part of it. Some people read a reversed card as its opposite, usually darker and more negative meaning. Reversed means the card is upside down relative to the person doing the reading. If you are watching from across the table it is upright for you. It is for exactly that reason that I seldom read much into the fact that a card is reversed. It depends on your perspective. I typically keep all facets of a card in mind, and just view the card as generally blocked or hampered or challenged when it turns reversed. In this case it seems very opposite-meaning because the card is about blockage in the first place. It’s like a double negative. Something that blocks blockage is something that allows flow.
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Take a deep breath and relax. Think about a question for the cards or think about your week ahead. Follow your first impulse and choose a card.
Restart the video to see your card and get the reading below:
The World (reversed)
I don’t always read a lot into reversed cards. If you think about it, it is right side up for someone sitting across from you. It’s a perspective thing. Reversed cards always ask for a little extra thought about context and perspective. Sometimes it can be a cue that a particular energy or topic or part of life is turbulent or blocked. Sometimes the context is this deck is printed on very glossy cardstock and chucks out reversals all of the time that don’t necessarily carry meaning.
In this case, the reversal is, intuitively, screaming for attention. It means something. The world is a major arcana card so it is a cue to high energies, key messages, possibly life lessons close around you.
The World is the final card in the major arcana suit. It has connections to completion, success, wholeness. It is also connected to connection…everything touches everything, and every part in a way contains the whole, touches the whole, hologram style. The card is pointing to this gestalt, holistic thinking today.
I’m not usually a heavy metal music fan, but thanks to family members I’ve heard some and “The Future is a Foreign Land” by Ghost, especially the part with the lyrics “when it all burns down.”
What do you do when your world has been turned inside out and upside down? What do you do when the person you thought was the one person who would be there for you when it all burns down is the one lighting the match?
Time may seem desperate, but when you get to the end of the major arcana then you go back to the Fool card and begin again, heartbreak and all.
Four of Cups
The pouring cup gets all of the attention here.
This is why I love the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. Sometimes it is profound. Sometimes it makes you feel “wut?”
That disconnected, ‘it’s just not resonating’ feeling is an element of the message today. The baseball imagery just isn’t getting it for me today…but that’s the message. It’s not about me.
And your concern may not be about you.
To be psychological about it, this is about intention and control. Despite our best intentions, we can’t control other people. You could pour a tanker truck of love and energy out but you can’t make someone feel any certain way. As the old proverb says: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
Cups cards are about emotions. Regardless of the response, to love is the victory. To love is the means and the ends and all that matters. Pour your cup of love, hopefully it will water the roots of a tree rather than wet the feet of a statue.
Thank you so much for watching and reading.
I wish you all a deep drink of love and wholeness.
See you at the next sip!
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission, Publishing Goblin LLC
Sage Sips blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
“Tarot doesn’t predict what is going to happen in life. Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens” – Sage Snow
ADA two-card readings are a daily meditation style Tarot that is intended to help ease worry and help creative problem solving because uncertainty sucks. Having a little understanding of a situation and a first step plan of action can go a long way to turn down the volume when anxiety happens.
The current energies: Four of Cups. Emotions just are – they come handed to you by life. You are the one who gets to decide if an emotion or a situation is a good or a bad thing. You get to decide whether to embrace or reject it. Don’t be stubborn about it. Your happiness is up to you.
What to do next: Page of Swords. Learn something. Knowledge is power. Swords are cards of mind and intellect. Googling social media doesn’t count here. Get real, science level information and education. Use your head. Use your know-how to cut through the fog and find your way through the storm of emotions.
Sage Sips is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Choose your card, left or right. Pause if you want more time. Restart to see the reveal and get your reading below
Four of Cups: You can offer every drop of all you feel, but you can’t control if another person will receive it. There is emotional truths in the adage “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
Page of Wands: Sometimes life’s biggest lessons are a baptism by inner fire. Your passions will teach you. Wishing health, safety and peace for all in the Los Angeles area disaster
KNIGHT OF PENTACLES: Like they said in “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,”…”put one foot in front of the other” One thing at a time, in the right order will get you through with energy to spare.
FOUR OF CUPS: “Everything you can do is all you can do” – David Axelrod. Show your love. Even if imperfect, that in itself is everything.
I’d originally intended to continue our series with the major arcana and the High Priestess where we would choose a card, and then connect it to the High Priestess to let it illuminate the chosen card and vice versa.
But staring at the cards before starting the video, it was clear that this is still all about summer season vibes and sure enough, cards are repeating the messages that have come through recently both in general audience readings and in private readings. A theme of “be patient with the pace, but start the journey” is emerging.
You know that adage about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with one step? It’s like that. It doesn’t matter how fast the journey goes as long as you are taking those steps. Now is a great time to take that first step, even if the next one is slower than expected.
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission
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It’s a learned skill.
And an internet meme.
James Bach, author of “Secrets of a Bucchaneer Scholar” once posted on social media that “People get defensive because they have something to defend.” It’s a normal, natural response and part of the learning process. After you read Tarot professionally for a while you learn not to take it personally. They’ll get over it. Or not. It’s up to them.
Sometimes the thing people are defending is something they actually need to change. Sometimes the “it” they are getting over is an honest answer that they didn’t want to hear. Nobody enjoys being called out on their s**t.
Sometimes being called out is exactly what we need.
As much as we enjoy indulging our confirmation bias, tempers flare when our biases are challenged instead.
As I read the cards, Tarot is usually a world of ideas, empowerment, encouragement, expanding horizons and gentle nudges. A little diplomacy goes a long, long way.
On the other hand, if subtle messages and gentle nudges are ignored, after a time our spirit guides (or however you think of these things) roll up their sleeves and break out the frying pan to the face method of communicating.
That’s the case here. Cups cards deal with emotions and close relationships. The emotion in question for the inverted four is moping and self-pity. There is no nonsense around the card today. Short, sweet and to the point, kind of like a caveman club over the head, the reversed four is telling us to stop moping, it’s time to move on. Wallowing in self-pity serves no one here. AKA …Knock it off!
Fire alarms aren’t quiet, subtle or diplomatic. They are loud and in your face and don’t care about feelings.
It isn’t fun for anyone when things get tense or feel confrontational. That’s never the intent of a Tarot reading. The intent is to shake us out of a stuck place or turn up the volume on a spirit message loud enough that we can finally hear it. The more important it is for us to hear a message, the more blunt, loud and direct the spirit message will become. A good Tarot reader can reflect that sense of urgency without being mean about it.
Even when spirit is telling it like it is, a little Tarot diplomacy (and humor) can go a long way.
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For the record, I wrote the bulk of this post yesterday, so no (private client from this morning) this isn’t directed at you. We all need a little bit of brutal honesty from the cards every now and then.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
But you can have a long cool drink of your own.
This card’s advice and energy might be a little connected to a private reading I did earlier today, but nevertheless it is one of those proverbial truisms that applies to everyone.
We can’t control other people, but we sure as hell can control ourselves.
We can offer our love, but can’t make other people accept it – much less requite it.
We can accept the love that is given to us. We can choose to reflect, return and magnify that love.
We can choose to close ourselves off, but don’t dare be hurt when other people turn away and stop offering their emotions and energies to a closed up lump.
Let emotions flow – there are always more where that came from.
Yes, absolutely, choose, control and curate how you express them and who you express them to. You can control that much, but not how -or if-they will react.
“You do you boo” is as demeaning and dismissive as it feels when someone says it to you…but it is also full, unbridled permission to let your freak flag fly and to do just exactly that…you.
“People are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln among others.
So what do you do about people who choose differently than you had hoped or just generally make up their mind to be miserable?
I don’t know.
I suspect the answer is to let them.
Respect their choices. Respect the mind they’ve made. But just as importantly, respect yours just as strongly.
Choose happy, and it is yours.
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous Yuletide Solstice time and New Year.
Thank you for reading and listening in 2022. Please stay tuned for a shiny new and improved blog, podcast and other new surprises coming in 2023.
It doesn’t matter who YOU think the wisest man who ever existed is, the point is that their philosophy – whoever they were or whatever that philosophy is – it is derived from introspection. The introspection is the thing.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Admittedly, my brain is getting in the way of intuition a little bit today. Or maybe this really is the energy message. I don’t know. I’ll let you and how much you resonate with the card decide that piece of it.
Often the four of cups has to do with someone who is sulking, or closed off. I see it often in relationship questions, which fits the suit of cup’s symbolism and connection to love, romance, and inner circle closest relationships of all types. It is often an energy of futility and unrequited emotion. It’s not good news in that context. Adages like “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,””throwing good money after bad” and “throwing pearls before swine” come to mind. Often this thread of meaning shows up in readings that are asking the “will I get back together with my ex-” variety of questions. You can’t control how other people feel and you can’t predict what they will feel or do, so the answer in that circomstance is sadly, no, the focus is internal. The message then becomes the advice of introspection….look within to do what you need to do to heal and hopefully progress to the move-on energy that the 8 of cups can offer.
But that, as they say, is another story.
Today, the card skips over all the closed-off energy and relationship advice. Today it cuts right to the chase and talks about introspection.
It resonates quite a bit with “Mr. Venn And His Nifty Diagrams” from yesterday on Sage & Stuff, my personal blog. That post was inspired by Hustle & Meditate the substack newsletter by meditation coach Jim Martin aka “The Unusual Buddha” plus an instagram post by I think it was Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch that spoke of mysticism and mystery teachings within witchcraft and magick.
In a nutshell, they both said the same thing although from different areas of expertise and separated by several months in time. The things they were saying were influenced by different cultures who came to similar conclusions a long time ago….despite being world apart in a B.C.E time where there was no trade or internet connecting northern Europe, India and China.
Both the Martin newsletter and the Auryn Instagram post conclude with the notion that, while we have much to learn from the masters who came before, we must each walk through the portal of learning for ourselves. We each have to walk our own path, carve our own way, experience the mysteries of the universe for ourselves and look at the moon with out own two eyes.
It is a bit of Isaac Newton meets Bruce Lee. Newton acknowledges that quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” end quote. Centuries later and inspired by a completely different culture, Bruce Lee admonishes his student in the movie Enter the Dragon quote “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” end quote.
Blind faith takes you nowhere. Accomplished masters can show you A way, but only you can walk it. Only you can see your true path through your own thoughts, contemplations and introspections.
Nineteenth century journalist, philosopher and father of Frankenstein author Mary Shelly, William Godwin once said that “The philosophy of the wisest man who ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.” Who you consider to be the wisest man person to have ever existed is up to you, but that too is derived from introspection – yours. Introspection is the thing, with this card and Godwin’s quote, but more than that, YOUR introspection is the key thing. The wisest person who ever existed may be a guide and a giant for you to stand upon, but it is still you that must do the standing, walking and moon gazing.
Thank you so much for reading and listening! I appreciate any likes, subs, shares, questions or comments that you can spare.
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Thanks again. See you Monday for the next short sip Tarot!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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