Tag: aclu

Two Minded Why

Seven Dane Asmund reads the Two of Swords as stagnation….something akin to the stagnation we see on a larger scale with the Hanged Man of the major arcana. Diane Morgan reads it a sort of spiritual connection or mystical unity.

Swords are connected to action and intellect, air and mind. The crossed swords speak to intellect thwarted. Combined with the blindfold on the figure, it all points toward using our connection to the mystical when logic fails. When all is objectively equal, when it is truly a ‘six of one, half dozen of another’ situation, we have to rely on something else in order to move forward.

As another blindfolded figure, the 8 of swords, teaches us that with a little creative problem solving there is always some sort of way forward.

Sometimes the WHY of a thing is that creative way through. Understanding why you want a thing can help decide if it is worth the cost of getting it. Understanding why a problem happened can help solve the problem and, more importantly, help prevent it from happening again.

Sometimes why doesn’t matter. Sometimes what is the place to start, regardless of why. What tells you what to do and you can figure out the why of it later if it is ever needed. This is one of the underpinnings for the ‘Action Eases Anxiety’ two card Tarot layout that I wrote.

I’ve always been of two minds about the WHY of things. Does the WHY behind what we all do really matter?

I have yet to figure that out. I think it might actually be entirely situational – sometimes yes and sometimes no.

Here is the ‘why’ on my mind right now….

Why do I want to make donations part of Sage Sips blog? We covered the inspiration for it back in July 2026 when I kicked it off with a donation to the ACLU. It’s just a tiny sip, but it’s a start.

In the spirit of fairness and transparency, I want to share the why behind the groups I’ve chosen for the ‘brew it forward’ portion-of-the-proceeds donations moving from here on. (One VERY small dollar donation to one organization each month as announced)

Yes, this is to some extent virtue signalling.

I’m not a public business, I don’t earn money from this (which is why I am so very grateful for your support on ko-fi) The ko-fi coffee only goes toward creating and web-hosting Sage Sips without ads or paywalls I have no interest in persuading you of anything and certainly not trying to convince you to buy anything.

When I signal the things I care about, people who don’t align with them can just move right along. Let’s start with the big one – religion.

If you are reading this evangelicals don’t like you.

If you enjoy, use, read, or even passively tolerate Tarot (or any spirituality other than evangelical Christianity) they think you are flawed. They think you are a lesser person even if they don’t actively hate you, which some no doubt do. I know. I was there. I heard with my own little ears that congregations are actively taught and indoctrinated with that kind of thinking. That’s why I donate to the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The wall between church and state is precious and being actively demolished here in the U.S. Protection and defense of that separation is vitally important to anyone reading these words right here, right now. They hate – or at least ‘strongly disapprove’ – of people like me. If you’ve read this far, they don’t like you either. This is important. Don’t take my word for it…go, learn about Christian nationalism and the threat it poses. Then please, donate, call Congress. Stand up for your rights.

My family’s home was destroyed by Hurricane Juan in 1985. I’m here to tell you a hot meal and cans of soup mean the universe. Food and clean water are, literally, life. That’s why I support the Red Cross disaster relief and World Central Kitchen. Cooking food is my love language. Those guys do it at scale.

Regardless of your spirituality or beliefs about it, Tarot deals in a currency of ideas. So do libraries. A public library lets you borrow any book they have, including racy romances, science, psychology even (gasp!) world religions and witchy occult topics. Libraries are lifesavers of the mind and spirit. Love your library! A portion of all ko-fi support for Sage Sips in September 2026 will be donated to the American Library Association.

Hugh Lane Wellness has done amazing, wonderful things for people I love like I love the air that I breathe. They, and the lgbtqia+ community have my full support and alliance.

Others will no doubt pop up as time goes on. August 2026 went to Democracy Forward as a nod to Molly Lee’s inspiration to start this ‘portion of the proceeds’ kind of easy activism.

So if you want a free tarot reading by email as a thank you gift, buy me a coffee and I’ll share it with a worthy organization that aligns with the values of first amendment civil liberties, food assistance and wellness.

Or donate to these good people directly.

Thanks for reading. See you at the next sip!

Brew It Forward

In honor of pride month I made a VERY small donation to the ACLU because of the work they do in court to advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights.

I’m inspired by Molly Lee of Optimistic Soap to use my Tarot skills to contribute to causes I care about. She donates $1 from every bar of soap purchased to Democracy Forward and to other organizations.

I stand with that.

I’ve brought back the Sage Sips Ko-fi membership and renamed it ‘Brew it Forward” Proceeds from the memberships plus $1 from each virtual coffee donated from the readings menu will go to a designated organization at the end of the month (a few of my favorites are listed below)

In honor of Optimistic Soap’s inspiration, July 2026’s “Brew It Forward” will go to Democracy Forward, too.

Please consider joining – there are five spots left. For $5 / month, each member gets access to private one card Tarot readings by email on request. Just ask. Send a DM or email with your name, question and email (it’s never shared, I just need to know where to send your reading) and your meditation style reading will arrive in your inbox.

I’m not in the Tarot business anymore, so please allow a few days for the readings to get to you. Because we live in a nation with increasingly bold white Christian nationalists, I feel compelled to say that we are doing here is creating customized Tarot themed ephemeral folk art that does not tell fortunes or predict the future. But that impulse is another big reason why I chose the ACLU and Demoracy Forward for my first two donations.

Anything is better than nothing – so DO something, any little thing you can to protect democracy and our civil liberty to create art, to follow the spiritual path that is right for us and to not follow a religion that is wrong.

Thank you for allowing me to read Tarot for you, and thank you for helping me make some tiny contribution to other important things, too.

Weekend Oracle: Wonder Full

Sometimes happiness is something you have to do on purpose.

The energy today, at the start of the weekend, continues along the same thread that we saw at the start of the week in the “Strive to Abide” week-ahead reading.

This card comes from the Alleyway Oracle of Secrets by Seven Dane Asmund. The Alleyman card (art by voidbug) is intended to represent awe and wonderment, as is often found with a chance encounter with a mysterious embodiment of the Alleyman within the original deck’s fictional lore.

If you like thought provoking fiction I highly recommend The Alleyman Podcast.

But back to today’s card.

If you can strive to abide, then you can choose happy.

Deliberately. On purpose. In the middle of disaster.

It’s not easy. I wouldn’t want to imply that it is. It is a black belt level fight with yourself.

I read somewhere that we humans are hardwired to spot threats and dangers long before we process the good things. It’s evolutionary survival.

But so is happiness. It’s hard to survive when your mental, emotional, and physical health is disintegrated by constant stress, pessimism and negativity.

If you aren’t feeling it – ok. Abide. Feelings are temporary. Feelings can be influenced. Causes have effects and you can be the cause that has the effect of you feeling a little better.

The mind body connection flows both ways. Decreasing stress can improve physical health, and caring for your physical being can improve your mood.

If memory serves, it is a Buddhist premise with some solid physiology sprinkled in.

Arrange your face. The face is highly innervated. Arrange your face into a small Mona Lisa smile and keep it that way for a few minutes. The feeling represented by the facial expression and body posture you’ve adopted can sleep into your emotions however you were feeling at the outset. That may be why Buddhist teachers mention posture and facial expression as a part of beginning to meditate. It sets up a positive feedback loop. Body posture improves meditation which reduces stress which improves physical health which improves mood….you get the idea.

It may not be our first instinct to see beauty and good things. We are wired to focus on threats so we can avoid or mitigate them. Today’s card is a reminder (akin to the high priestess card in the RWS Tarot) to use our big old homo sapiens brains and step in and deliberately appreciate the good that saturates our existence. If it wasn’t there, we wouldn’t exist to appreciate anything. Look around. You aren’t actively in danger right now, are you? (If you are, what the hell are you doing staring at a screen reading this?!)

Take a breath.

That is a life giving miracle, right there.

Do you have the means for your next meal? Are you wearing clothes? Obviously you have an electronic device to entertain you and connect you to other people. This train of thought reminds me of the scene from the 1990s Robin Hood where Morgan Freeman’s character tells Kevin Costner’s Robin of Loxley “You whine like a mule – you are still alive!”

I can’t remember where I saw it, or if there is any logic or facts or data behind it, but I think I’m latching on to the memory of a 2 second social media clip because there is some level of truth to it….bursts of emotions, even the most painful ones, last 90 seconds unless we mentally grab onto them and keep replaying them in our mind.

If the Chariot card from Monday reminds us that we can choose to abide then today’s Alleyman card reminds us the world is full of wonder that we choose to see.

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip

Buy me a coffee on ko-fi during the month of June 2026 and the proceeds will be donated to ACLU in celebration of Pride Month

Feeling Kawaii, Won’t Delete Later

Raise a mug to equality!

100% of “Buy me a coffee” donations on the Sage Sips Ko-Fi page during the month of June 2026 will be donated to the ACLU in celebration of Pride month and in support of civil rights and lgbtquia+ equality.

The deck choice fits the feeling today. The energy seems light and playful, at least for the weekend.

I don’t know why I don’t use it more. This deck, the Kawaii Tarot by Diana Lopez is one of two decks that were given to me as gifts – late in my professional Tarot career, actually. Just want to say up front that I totally do NOT buy into that Tarot cards have to be given to you nonsense. It’s the right tool for the right job kind of thing and saying a tarot deck has to be gifted to you is like saying your favorite screwdriver or kitchen pot has to be gifted to you in order to be skilled at home repair or a good cook. But that is beside the point – back to feeling cute.

Let’s do this as an Action Eases Anxiety layout. Anxiety short circuits cute, which is the major part of the message here.

What it is (current energy): The Moon card has been popping up a lot lately. Natural cycles go at their own pace. I hear “gentle pirouette” It is like the gradual fade of ombre hair color. It’s isn’t the flip of a switch – it is more like dissolving a sugar cube into a hot cup of tea than running through a doorway.

Now I’m taken back yet again to the mountain ridge image from the Summit and Crossroads post. The path straight ahead is still the one in light, the one with pull. The side paths along the razor sharp narrow ridge are even darker. It is like climbing a cliff, standing a moment to look around the stepping forward from that rocky ridge into a wide gradual grassy meadow to walk down the other side of the peak.

When we look at ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do it’ we run right into reversed cards. As we’ve talked about before, there are a few different ways to handle reversals (cards that are upside down relative to the person doing the reading) Some people just flip the meaning from a positive to a negative meaning regardless of the intuitive feeling. Another strategy is to simply flip the card upright and go on taking all possible meanings into consideration, as is typical in the Lenormand tradition. Finally (my favorite) is to read the card taking all of it’s possible meanings into consideration BUT leave it inverted using the reversal as a hint that the energy is blocked or turbulent.

What to do is the Queen of Pentacles. The queen has to do with comfort and prosperity and meeting material needs and, as with all Pentacles, down-to-earth practicality. The reversal reminds us that times are tough. It isn’t yet time for a splurge or to be too spendthrifty. Plan purchases. Head over heart for a while longer while the gradual fade to better times happens.

How to do it gives us the Two of Swords. Swords are air and intellect, emphasizing head over heart. It is ok not to know what to do, or be able to plan with great confidence right now. It is enough to be responsive and aware. A cool head responding to situations at hand is enough. If you are of two minds about something, all things being equal, let logic lead the way for the next little while.

We’ll know when it is a heart-forward kind of time again.

Meanwhile, while logic and intellect lead, let the heart have a little time to play and feel cute – no need to delete now or later.

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!

Low Tech Ritual

Also on Sage’s Second Cup blog

Our hot water is out.

Sure, I’ve done my fair share of complaining about boiling water on the stove to keep us and the kitchen sanitary like I’m Ma Ingalls and this is 1826 or something. That’s in spite of the fact that I’m doing it in an air conditioned house with an electric stove and not over a wood fire in some hovel hole of a cabin in the wilderness. I LIKE it here in the future with electricity, indoor plumbing and whatnot.

But you know what they say about clouds and silver linings. Or as author Richard Bach put it “there is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.”

Hmm. Maybe that plus the narrow mountain top ridge image from the “Summit and Crossroads” and “Move with Charisma” tarot readings is a solid hint to re-read Bach’s Illusions or finally get around to reading The Razor’s Edge. That’s idea, too. Book reviews over on Second Cup – but none of that is the point. Back to the hot water thing.

The problem with the stovetop hot water is that it is a sloooow way to do things.

The beautiful part of the stovetop hot water is that it is a slow way to do things.

I especially noticed it bathing. The slow acts of putting the water on to heat, cleaning the sink, moving the soap from its usual shower spot to a place on the countertop within reach; trivial things to be sure, but it takes on an almost ritual-like quality.

It was a mindfulness trap.

Without intending it, it dropped me into a meditative mindset. Instead of quick, thoughtless and profoundly mundane, I found myself engaging with the moment. It wasn’t the usual quick hop shower. This was a thing.

The same can, and does, apply to Tarot reading.

It doesn’t matter what you ritual IS – it matters what your ritual DOES.

Whatever your process or ritual, it shifts you from the everyday world into an engaged frame of mind. The ritual and process of a Tarot reading shifts us from mindless to mindful. Whatever your ritual, habit or process might be, it makes tarot reading into a thing.

Spirit speaks in whispers. Tarot and its attendant rituals, even the casual ones, helps us to hear those whispers.

Using a reading cloth, or a particular shuffle pattern, having a dedicated space, lighting candles or incense or whatever you do when you do a reading all has the effect of slowing down our normal pace. Those objects and activities aren’t sacred, but the mindset they create is.

Tarot reading rituals are a mindfulness trap.

The pattern quiets and comforts. It is like giving a toddler a new toy or handing a banana to a hungry monkey. Some routine or ritual that is a built in part of beginning a reading comforts and quiets our logical mind enough to help us hear our intuition and the quiet whispers of spirit and energy.

A wonderful as the modern age and its indoor plumbing may be, some things are ancient and still powerful. Often the most powerful things are the quietest, and the simplest, like a low tech ritual.

Raise a mug to civil rights

“Buy me a coffee” on Ko-fi during the month of June 2026 and get a daily meditation style Tarot reading by email as a thank you gift. All proceeds will be donated to the ACLU in support of their work to protect LGBTQIA+ equality and civil rights. Happy Pride Month!

July Announcements

I like science and astronomy. Always have. That’s not an announcement but if you want to see an honest to goodness naked eye visible comet, now’s your chance. EarthSky explains: https://earthsky.org/space/how-to-see-comet-c2020-f3-neowise The view east from our house is basically a big, so good luck to us seeing this one. But if you do take a peek, spare a quick thought for the feeling and energy of the moment. Remembering that experience might be helpful in understanding the Star card if it comes up in a reading for you. Yeah, I know the difference between a comet and a star, but ye olde Tarot inventors probably didn’t. There are lots of old superstitions about comets, just like the old superstitions about Tarot predicting the future. I’m not saying looking at comet NEOWISE will predict your future, but it might help you get a better feel for your own good intuition and Tarot practice. If nothing else it will be a pretty lump of space ice.

star

SUMMER SPECIALS

The special offers page still has the new “Timeflow” layout at a reduced price with a portion of the proceeds donated to the ACLU.

Also on the special offers page: Buy a second quality paper copy of PeaceTarot (my booklet that teaches you how to do DIY daily meditation Tarot readings) and get a mini InkMagick handwritten Tarot Reading plus free shipping! The booklet is single-side printed, and I’ll write your unique one card reading in the white spaces of the book, making it a one of a kind, just for you. Purchase this special item through the TaoCraft Tarot etsy shop. Supplies are limited.

PHONE READINGS ARE BACK.

I’d discontinued them for a long time. There just wasn’t a lot of interest. Since in-person sessions and party Tarot are on extended hiatus due to the pandemic, phone readings are back, baby. If you want a live real-time reading, just schedule -> pay -> call and enjoy!

Details are HERE. Use email or voicemail to schedule the reading, then use the secure paypal buttons on the “phone tarot” page to select and pay for the layout of your choice. Three layouts are available: 7 card is the EXACT SAME layout from the in-person sessions. The five card is a good all purpose layout and particularly well suited to first-ever readings. If you just want a down-and-dirty yes or no answer that could ALMOST be construed as a prediction, the 3 card “Zombie Cat” yes or no layout is sticking around for summer, too. Apocalyptic warning: All Zombie Cat readings have a 50% chance of being DEAD WRONG. After all, it says zombie right there in the name.

COVID COOTIES are still out there!

Get a Tarot reading from a safe and happy distance, no appointment needed on the home page. Typed and video reading formats are available by email just like they have ALWAYS been.

I’ve been reading cards since the early 90s, and I love, love, LOVE doing them in a written format. Distance Tarot is my specialty, and has been LOOOOONG before caronaviruses came to town.

Please consider giving a distance session a try. But still wash your hands after, just because, you know, wash your hands.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot June 7-13: resonance, anomalies, and a find line between

Watch the video, and choose a card. Pause the video if you need a moment. Then restart for the reveal and read the card interpretation below.

This week the energy around the cards are remarkably different from the past several weeks. Last week, I didn’t do a a card draw at all. It just wasn’t the time or place for a chirpy little youtube video. Too much was going on. Democracy was dying, innocents were attacked, it was and is real. If you thought the pandemic was time to get pragmatic, this is the time to act. If nothing else, use whatever social media presence you have to support the protests, and also contact your members of congress and urge them to support the legislation being introduced this week to modify qualified police immunity and improve transparency and accountablility. Above all, please, vote in November. Black lives matter. Love is love. Women’s rights are human rights. Remember peaceful protestors being tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets to give insanity a photo op. Don’t let democracy die. It’s already on a ventelator.

That being said, there has been a shift in the connection of the cards to the general current event energies and the social zeitgeist. These cards are remarkably separate and distinct. I think that might be a reminder that, no matter how intuitive or empathic we may be, we can find, strengthen, protect and enforce the boundary between our own inner world and the energies around us. Even though this has been an issue and message for months now, it is more important than ever to know what is truely you, and what is you responding to outside stimuli. You are the bell, not the thing ringing it. Healthy boundaries are more important than ever. Think for yourself. Feel from a place of compassion more than a place of reactivity.

Another change is the interconnection between the cards themselves. The past several weeks, the cards seemed to work together, like individual words within a sentence. This week they are more like individual bubbles. They seem to be speaking to different people in very different mental places.

Left: Nine of Cups. Job well done! This card is associated with cycles, phases, or projects that have come to completion in a good way. Your boundaries are strong. Don’t feel guilty about what you have (or soon will) accomplished. Stay strong so you can inspire others. Your energy flows with the quote from Mahatma Ghandi to “be the change you want to see in the world”

Center: Five of Wands. Are you ready to rumble? Life is turbulent right now. Even if you are perfectly happy and content energies and challeges might take some annoying swipes at you. Stay chill, you’ll get through it. I get very martial arts, kung fu images here. Conflict can be rightous. This reminds me of the CK Chesterson quote “A soldier fights not because he hates what is before him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Right: Temperance. You are still in a place where it isn’t a good time to be overly spiritual, or make any big decisions. It is extra important for you to be sure of your balance. Take whatever extra time you need before making big choices or moving big steps ahead. Work from your center, work and think and decide from the most centered, most level headed, lowest emotional temperature place that you can muster. Balance and clear headedness is critical, with the full force of a major arcana card.

It’s not much, but it’s what I have right now: 20% of all proceeds from the new “TimeFlow” Tarot readings by email will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through August 30, 2020. Please visit the special offers page to order.

Thank you all for reading and watching the videos.