astrology – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

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Witches Archetype Oracle deck by “The Pretty Cult” used with permission

I stumbled across this deck last October at the Oddities Expo in Pittsburgh. I immediately wanted to use it for Weekend Oracle posts It took a little while for the email conversation to get permission to use it, then life happened and here we are.

This isn’t so much an unboxing, or review or how to, or getting to know the deck like we’ve done in the past. In working with it for a little while now, I haven’t found it to be a particularly helpful deck. It doesn’t give the kind of guidance that most people expect from Tarot or Oracle reading. The intuitive prompting is a bit dilute and it gives no sense of current energies. If anything, it made me appreciate the Alleyman’s Tarot deck’s genius all over again.

It took me a while to figure out that this deck’s real strength.

It doesn’t have much to do with witches or oracles at all really. Metaphorically speaking it’s more like a guide about how to find a flashlight at night during a blackout. It feels like a guide to other sources of strength and inspiration rather than being a direct source of inspiration itself.

It isn’t about the energy environment. It isn’t about advice about what to do. It isn’t about cautions about what to avoid. It isn’t about guidance for making choices.

It is about the most accessible source or type of helping energy to DO what you want AFTER you’ve made your choice. This is about what fuel to put in the car, not about which way to steer.

To put it in GPS terms, this is the ‘find the nearest gas station’ function not the trip directions or traffic conditions.

Today’s card is the “Cosmic Witch.” I’m reminded of the idea of when we are alone we are most reminded we are connected to and a part or the cosmos – the absolute totality of everything in both time and space. Carl Sagan described the cosmos as “all that is or ever was or ever will be.” You exist in this moment so you are now and forever a part of of the cosmos. It is impossible to be lonely in that kind of company

On a simpler level, if astrology resonates with you, that is a excellent guide and a strong influence for you this weekend.

Thanks for reading! Next up: Week Ahead Tarot, coming up either Sunday or Monday afternoon. See you at the next sip!

Week Ahead Tarot: Cleverness and Trust

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THE SNAKE: Stay quiet and camouflaged, use logic and observation to learn who you can trust – or not.

THE DOG: Someone trustworthy is near. Find them, and be as good of a friend to them as they are to you. The sum will be greater than the parts for all concerned.

If your individual intuition is the engine that drives a Tarot reading, symbolism is the steering wheel.

Like a car in Pennsylvania during pothole season, it’s very easy for that steering to get out of alignment. Symbolism is very influenced by culture and time and has to be kept in context. It has to be in alignment with the reader and the sitter and the intuitive vibe of the reading.

Take the color black, for example.

For some, black is seen as aligned with “evil.” In western traditions black has been associated with death, funerals and mourning, but also with evening elegance and fashion, men’s tuxedos for example.

In Japan, novice monks and many lay people wear black as a symbol of their dedication to practice and as a symbol of community.

The symbolism for snakes is just as varied. Sometimes they are seen as symbolizing lies or deception as in the Christian garden of Eden myth or someone being a “snake in the grass” in an old western movie.

In Chinese cultures, snakes are associated with wisdom, intelligence, charm and grace. In many places they are connected to personal growth and transformation through their ability to shed their old skin as they grow.

Dogs on the other hand, are all just good bois and gurls. How an individual person treat dogs and other small animal is the tell here more than any broad cultural reference. If a dog likes you, you must be OK. If you like dogs, there must be some kindness in your heart. Dogs symbolize great loyalty and deep friendship almost everywhere. Only after they have been through horrors do they devolve into aggression and threat.

If you chose the snake card, beware deception – use observation, cleverness and intellect to understand who to trust. Take inspiration for the snake to adapt and transform yourself.

If you chose the dog card, know others by their proven trustworthiness and kindness. Be a friend, find a friend, hold on to your friends.

Todays Tarot: Every Little Thing

“We can “read” anything in our world as an answer to an issue or question. The answer is in our heart and the world reflects it back to us. If you asked a question and your eyes caught a spider web, this web would reflect the truth that was within and be an answer to your question.” – Joy Star

One contemporary way of understanding the four minor arcana suits in is terms of relationships: how we related to the physical realm, to our inner selves, to society at large and when it comes to cups, our relationship with relationships or our innermost circle of loves, friends and family. In a nutshell, all of the king cards symbolize leadership. Cups also relate to the alchemical element water. Water in general relates to intuition (think of the fish in a cup, mysteries from the depths of our psyche connotations from the Page of Cups card.)

Stir all of that together and it eventually boils down to intuition leading you, or leading through a deep trust in your intuition. One of my favorite interpretations for this card over the years is the king of cups as pointing to a spirit guide. A more literal spin is that of a mentor who guides your development in a specific area but in more connected, long term, developmental way than you would associate with a teacher or manager or organizer.

For now, I’d like to focus more on the spirit guide side of it. If you feel drawn to the mentoring side (either as mentor or mentee) I strongly suggest reading Chunliang Al Huang’s excellent book Mentoring: The Tao of Giving and Receiving Wisdom.

Spirit guides are a fascinating subject. Books could, and have been, written about them. My absolute go-to favorite is Ted Andrews’ How to Meet and Work With Spirit Guides. Some people think of them as something very separate from themselves like a patron saint sort of figure. Some see them closer, like a guardian angle or the one to one spirit guide described by Andrews, Bach and others. Still others see a “spirit guide” as a reflection of our spiritual side, our “higher selves.” This is the kind of guidance that Joy was hinting at when she wrote about the world reflecting our truth. Things like Tarot cards, planets, stars, runestones, I Ching lines….whatever it is…don’t give answers in and of themselves. They are the carrier signal, the pipeline, that lets the message come through. Oracles deliver the message from our inner wisdom and higher selves through the noise of everyday living to our everyday consciousness. The cool thing is every little thing can be an oracle. Remember that lyric from the song by the Police “every little thing she does is magic” ? It is just as true that every little thing is magic. Anything can be a tiny little validation, or an itsy nudge toward the way you should go. Every little thing is magic when you look with intuitive eyes.

REpeat not RETROpeat

A few days ago, we looked at the question of why cards sometimes turn up repeatedly in readings, regardless of whether you are getting readings or giving them. As I was uploading the post, I could almost hear a chorus of “It’s Mercury Retrograde” coming from social media as a hot take explanation of why life lessons are hard to learn; why messages aren’t being heard well and why cards have repeating lately.

I disagree. Understanding and enacting an important life lesson often takes much longer than any given Mercury retrograde. It takes more than a Mercury year. It can take multiple Earth years. Any retrograde of any planet in any solar system is no more than a trick of forced perspective. It is the relative movement of a very close planet compared to very distant stars. It is a little like those photos where it looks like someone is holding up the leaning tower of Pisa or holding the setting sun in the palm of their hand. As the animation above shows us, shift your point of view, and POOF! no retrograde. Only normal cycles of planets – and of nature – remain.

I have seen, however, a connection between repeating Tarot cards and one particular planet’s orbit. It isn’t Mercury; It’s Earth. The Wheel card in particular speaks to these cycles. When the Wheel shows up, think about natural cycles that may be moving through your life. There is also a subtext of adaptation. We must move with the wheel of time and natural cycles, or be crushed beneath it. This is a good example of a difficult life lesson that takes time to learn, don’t you think?

Seasons of the year are an obvious natural cycle. Over time, I’ve seen several cards cluster around summer and winter. They seem to capture the essence of the season. I often see cards like the 9 of cups, the 4 of wands or the 3 of cups turn up frequently around the Winter holidays. It fits Those holidays are akin to the cards with celebrations, traditions, family foundations and social connections all at top of mind that time of year.

Summer cards are a bit more subtle.

We think of summer as an active time, and it is. Yet it needs balance. In the winter, we balance the seasonal cold with warm things: woolly clothes, fires in fireplaces, spices, warm drinks, candles, lights. Summer needs balanced with cool drinks, sitting in the shade, loose cool clothing, going barefoot. Again, there are cards that hint at this seasonal balance, with quiet introspective cards like the 4 of swords, 3 of wands, 5 of cups or The Hermit. Admittedly, I’ve seen this pattern emerge more as a reader than as an individual. It think of it as being part of the entrainment phnomenon we talked about last time. Cards may repeat in a party (or in a season) as a resonance with the time and place (or time of year.)

If a card keeps turning up time and again, yes, it is significance. Yes, that repetition in and of itself is a message. If a card keeps repeating, it could be for multiple different reasons. As always, it is usltimately up to your feeling and your intuition to decide which reason best fits..or if it is something else entirely. It might be:

an important message or lesson you are misunderstanding, failing to hear, or failing to enact
a significator, a stand-in for you in the reading to show how Tarot and spiritual growth in general fits in with you as individual and with your self-image of the time.
a validation, a signal from spirit the card’s message is important, real, authentically for you
resonating with places you go …. parties and so on
resonating with the season of the year

Not the Mercury retrograde thing AGAIN

mini rant about mercury retrograde

All the blame-y victim-y whine-y energy and posts about friggen’ Mercury damn retrograde on social media ( looking at you Instagram) has officially gotten on my last nerve.

Blaming poor choices or random gliches on “Mercury retrograde” is like saying you stubbed your toe because it is raining in Poughkeepsie. Magick, energy, intuition, creativity, life force, the random crap of living – it is all bigger than one zippy little planet in one out of the way solar system in a really really big universe. You are part of the big stuff. You are rightfullly as much a part of the Cosmos as is Mercury. Now, knock it off about the damn retrograde, OWN your life and go be amazing.

You Are Part of Something Big

I totally agree with Theresa here. There is no denying the unique beauty of our solar system and the dance it does. It is the essence of our point of view on the cosmos. But it is just that, a relative point of view but not absolute reality. How the sun and moon align with other stars from the singular perspective of planet Earth is breathtaking, beguiling, and our portal to larger understanding to be sure. But these alignments have little meaning to other parts of the universe. The Mars rovers gave a very different view of…and energy environment from…tonight’s “super blood wolf moon.” It’s going to be gorgeous for those able to view it, no doubt about that. Celebrate it, enjoy it, soak up its energy, yes. Still, don’t forget that there is a larger Cosmos than the sun, the Earth, and the Moon. You are as much a part of that larger Cosmos as you are part of Earthly beauty and the Earthly perspective. The dance nearby is magical, but you can make your own music any time you like. The dance hall of the Cosmos is big enough for any and all of us to dance free.

Tag: astrology

Weekend Oracle: Connected