It’s time.
Things are circling back.
What you’ve given is about to return.
Efforts are about to pay off if they aren’t already.
It’s a time of power. Accept the boons the universe is offering gratefully, and place intentions for the future.
It’s a good time to both reap what you’ve sown and sow again well.
Four of Cups: You can speak from the heart, but you can’t force others to hear what you say.
Accepting people for who they truly are is an act of love, even when that includes a painful rejection, even when that requires that you let them go.
Other people’s happiness is not your responsibility. It’s up to you to give love. It’s not up to you whether or not it is accepted.
The only happiness you are responsible for is your own.
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Nine of Wands and Holding Space continues
Two threads are better than one
Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip Tarot where we contemplate Tarot in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today we are picking up on a second thread of meaning that parallels the meanings we talked about in the Hold Peaceful Space post and episode.
Please feel free to go back to that part of this Nine of Wands reading at the link above or in the podcast episode menu.
Today, instead of thinking about the space within, the nine of wands asks us to think a little bit about the boundary that defines that space.
Last time we talked about the tone and energy and environment of a space, be it a physical space or mental one. The two are parallel. Think of a literal room. If it is cold and noisy and missing a window, would you want to spend the night there? The same is true of our mental and emotional spaces. You might be in a literal unpleasant space but still hold a warm peaceful place within. It isn’t easy, but sometimes one can lead to the other. An inviting and comfortable literal space supports a happy, confident mindset. A happy, whole, and peaceful mindset supports creating a better literal situation. Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill whatever kind of space you hold accordingly.
But you can’t hold or create any space at all without some sort of boundary. A teacup is the classic Zen example. Without its sides, the teacup doesn’t exist. A teacup needs substance, like wood or ceramic. A teacup made from rice paper isn’t going to work for very long. Yet, almost paradoxically, it is the empty space that the teacup bounds and defines and holds that makes the teacup what it is. The space it holds in essence and function defines the teacup. No empty space, no room for tea and it’s not a cup. Only the empty teacup that is holding space can be filled with tea.
That was the main message. The undercurrent of energy, focused on the cup holding the space instead of the space itself.
For an intuitive, energy sensitive person sometimes the teacup is thin to the point of not knowing where the tea begins and air around it ends. To a very sensitive person it’s all tea. For anyone, if the boundary is damaged, the tea is drained away.
I’ve been working with cards and intuition since the early 1990s and reading Tarot professionally for almost – good gravy – twenty years now. In my experience, Tarot clients are an intuitive and energy sensitive group of people. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have been drawn to Tarot in the first place. It takes some modicum of intuition and insight to be able to use Tarot for the inspiration, comfort, personal growth and creative problem solving that Tarot was always intended to provide. (We’ll save my ranting about predicting the future for another day.)
Because of that inherent sensitivity, I did readings with some really uncomfortable people in late 2019 and 2020. Many had a vague sense of something wrong, but couldn’t quite figure out what. Other people felt overwhelmed by one specific thing, but the feeling was stronger than usual for the situation. All sorts of things came to the Tarot Table that year. Many of them felt as if the issue was outside of them, not internal. Even though I was reading for them about their specific concern, it also felt like something on the outside was tapping on their teacups like that movie trope of tapping on a wine glass to get attention for a toast. One reading after another, the message was that they were individually OK but that they were also resonating and vibrating with the high voltage zeitgeist energy of the times. It’s like that physical phenomenon where if you sound a note loud enough, nearby bells or instrument strings that are tuned to that note will vibrate along with it. The stress and fear of the pandemic had all of our intuitive teacups quivering.
When that kind of resonance happens, it can be helpful to think about our boundaries. In other words, when the outside world is ringing your teacup, know your teacup and make it as strong as you can.
Here is an imagination experiment to show what I mean.
Take a deep breath, close your eyes and imagine.
Imagine you are surrounded by something that symbolizes protection to you. Imagine you are are in a submarine or a safe room. Imagine you are in a fort or a castle keep. Imagine you are holding a black crystal or wearing a superhero cape. My favorite is to imagine wearing one of those bomb squad blast suits or one of those hazmat suits with the big clear visors like in the movie Outbreak. Whatever symbol you choose, imagine you are surrounded, safe, and protected from any outside influences on your mood.
I’m not talking about you being attacked by psychic vampires or hexes or being beset by negative influences….I’m just saying leave your stress-y mess at the door and be your own true self for half a minute.
Here’s the thought experiment – when you imagine that protected place, how do you feel in there? If you go into your mental bomb shelter and still feel that something is wrong, then you have a different problem. It isn’t a matter of resonance to outside energies. If you go into your hazmat suit and feel like “HEY! It’s kinda happy in here” then that also shows you what you need to do next.
This mental exercise shows you whether your next step is yin or yang. If you still feel bad inside your imagined shelter, then you need to turn your attention inward with self care, self love and healing. If you feel happy inside your mental safe space, then that is a call to turn your attention outward for a little practical, down to earth planning and problem solving.
You can’t hold space without something to hold it in.
This kind of mental exercise helps you learn your teacup.
Don’t save this quick little boundary check just for when times are tough and situations are stressful. The nine of wands came along today to remind us to pay attention to energy boundaries and healthy psychological and emotional boundaries at other times too. Try the mental exercise when things are fine. Learn what it feels like when things are OK both inside and out so you can recognize when things are OK inside but you are reacting to stress from outer collective energies.
Tend to your teacup so it holds good space for your tea when you need it to, so to speak.
Thank you so much for reading and listening!
Any likes, subs, follows, or shares are always appreciated. If you enjoy Sage’s Sips, please click the white coffee mug on the blog or visit the ko-fi page link in the episode description. When you buy me a virtual coffee it supports the free Tarot content in the blog and podcast.
Page of Wands meets Seneca on Luck and opportunity
Thoughts on the nine of wands, holding space, and the energy sensitive person tomorrow (or maybe Saturday)
Late winter schedule: none. We are in full pirate radio squirrel rave mode until further notice.
Have a good day! – Sage
You’ve heard the term “hold space” but what kind of space are you holding?
What is inside that space we are always talking about holding?
Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee. Or tea. Or adult beverage. Or whatever it is you are sipping this time of day. I’m glad you are here.
Every profession loves its jargon and jazzy acronyms. Spiritual or psychic work is no different. Speaking just for Tarot readers, we have a whole glossary of terms that make sense to us, but may or may not make sense to people who don’t spend their day immersed in the woo woo.
The phrase “hold space” is an example.
It is a little hard to imagine, since there isn’t a really good physical world analog. How do you hold space? In a jar with a lid? Does a bowl or coffee mug count?
Holding space is a mental and emotional process more than a tangible thing, although there are tangible things that one can do to symbolize and support the internal process of holding space. That’s why sometimes people who want to find long term romantic partnership are sometimes advised to clear out a drawer or a closet and literally make space in their life for the soulmate that they hope to find. It creates a mindset as much as it creates a later convenience.
It’s a hard thing to put into words, but I would define holding space as “mindfully allowing” combined with the far more familiar “save my seat.”
When we say hold space it also relates to the principle from science that “nature abhors a vacuum.” When we create space, nature tends to flow something into it. If you put a bowl out in a rainstorm, it collects more water than a brick because of the space the bowl holds that the brick doesn’t have. When you pull back on the plunger of a syringe, it holds space in the barrel for the medicine to flow in.
When we admit that something can be a part of our life, then we save its seat, we save that thing’s spot in line next to us. Admit can mean confess or confirm the truth of something, or it can mean allow someone in, as a ticket to an event is admission to that event. When we admit that we want something, that is a step toward admitting that thing into your life.
Doing the literal work or preparing a literal space is another step.
Today’s nine of wands points out another aspect of that process. It’s an aspect that I don’t think gets much thought or attention sometimes.
Desire and a fear and desperation that you may never get what you want can make the whole holding space thing messy if not impossible .
If you want to save space, to hold space for something or someone to come in, the quality of the space may affect the admission process.
Think of a literal room.
If a room is cold or noisy or missing a window or missing a big part of the outside wall…who or what would want to inhabit that space? If a room is secure, comfortable, quiet and inviting, who or what is going to want to stay there?
If that room is metaphor for part of your heart, mind, awareness or emotions, what are you asking in? What is that inner room going to attract? More importantly, is that inner space you are holding one you are willing to live in one the hoped-for person, thing or situation arrives?
The theory applies to anything. If you hold a peaceful place within, then you can be safe and warm and comfortable and happy while you are waiting for your invited guest to arrive. You can be safe and warm and happy even if the invited guest never comes.
Whether you are hoping for prosperity or a soulmate or whatever it is, pay attention to the mental and emotional space that you are inviting the wanted person or thing to enter. The more peaceful the space, the happier the end result.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. I have a few more thoughts about this card and empaths, but we can pick up that thread another day.
Private Tarot readings are open, and help support this blog and podcast. Memberships on ko-fi give you a monthly pathway reading, exclusive content, shop discount and more. Links are in the episode description for podcast listeners.
Thanks again! See you at the next sip!
Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Some days you just call it a day
Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip Tarot. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the five of swords. It’s one of those cards that gives the swords suit its reputation for being doom and gloom bearer of bad tidings. Not everything in life is all cotton candy and unicorns. It’s Tarot’s job to get in our face about the messy parts of life as much as it is to inspire us with the pretty ones. Tarot’s symbolism is both because life and nature is both, to borrow the sentence pattern from that line in that movie The Craft.
The five of swords is, at least in part, about winning at all costs and when the costs are too high. Hannibal and the elephants he used to cross the alps and win a victory in one battle against the Romans, but ultimately lose the war is the classic example of this. He started with 37 elephants and only one survived or some such thing.
Of course, my favorite telling of the Hannibal story is Eddie Izzard’s brilliant stand up bit about the Latin language including something about elephants looking like squirrels in the front and pigs in the back.
Thinking of that favorite piece of video (it’s on the internet, and I recommend it) might be a little carry over from yesterday’s Tarot Turnover where we talk about how to read Tarot on the members only blog. Yesterday’s card was the Page of Cups, which always carries a little bit of humor and absurdity. I mean, it shows a dude on a beach staring at a fish in a cup. Whatever other symbolism that may hold, it is on its face a little silly.
So are pigs and squirrels.
When we combine the two cards we get a reminder very apropro to a Monday morning like this.
Ridiculousness and absurdity might be a clue.
When things are dramatically not going your way, when you run headlong straight into a wall, it might be time to pack up your pigs and squirrels and cross the Alps another day.
Winston Churchill may have equated victory with survival, but is that really the victory we are stressing over? If this card speaks to you today, it may be time to stop and evaluate your goals. If it is survival, yes, by all means do that.
If your goal is a quick mocho-choco -frozo-latte when there is a line at the coffee shop, then this is your cue to ease up, and define victory a little differently. Be kind to yourself AND the local barista. Is this really as big of a deal as it feels? Is it worth it? What do we define as a success? Do we need to re-visit and change our goals and our definition of success? What is really, really worth every bit of your persistence and resources and what should be left for another day?
Thanks so much for reading and listening. I wish you and all of your pigs and squirrels a lovely Monday.
If you can, please visit the link in the podcast description or click the white coffee mug on the blog. Your support through private readings, memberships, shop purchases and virtual coffees is what makes it possible to bring these free Tarot readings to you.
See you at the next sip!
The Empress reminds us to attune with nature. Find a way to enjoy the weather that is, not the weather you wish it to be. When is the weather is your favorite kind, enjoy it all the more. Email readings are OPEN and support this channel, the blog, and the podcast.
Healing requires a change of heart and mind
They don’t call it a hook for nothing.
Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sips: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m Sage and I’m glad that you are here.
Sometimes, when things go a little wonky, you just pick up the pieces and go on without a second thought. It’s like the upside down or reversed cards we’ve talked about before. Sometimes it feels like nothing so I flip the card and keep going. Sometime the reversal feels significant so I read it as a caution that some aspect of the energy is blocked or turbulent.
The same process applies to making the youtube videos of the real world card draw that inspires all of the short sip posts and pods. Sometimes things get clumsy or stuck filming the card draw for the day. Most of the time I just scoop up the cards and re-do it so it fits into a 15 second tiktok or youtube short. Today I was the stuck one instead of the two cards that stuck together for this video. I thought about scooping up the cards and re-shooting, but I felt stuck on this and got a niggly little feeling that the other card…both cards together really… might be important.
Today we get the eight of swords PLUS the eight of cups.
The second card surprised me by being an eight card too. Getting two eight cards back to back feels significant. It might just be validation that the two cards are indeed connected and working in together for today’s message, but it feels bigger than that. Eight isn’t ringing any bells for me personally. What about you? Anybody with an August birthday? Anyone connecting to any August event: a birth, death, or any anything from any August in the past? Any connection with the eighth of any month? Any eight connection at all with the number 8 that lights up for you?
Is that vague and stage cold reading enough for you? Anybody and everybody can probably drum up some connection with either the number 8 or the month of August. All of these suggestions are the standard, banal, boilerplate interpretations of repeating numbers in a Tarot reading. I only mention it because it feels important to the collective energy part of this reading. Like everyone on the planet, I can think of a connection for me with August…so trust me. Your gut will undoubtedly know if your 8 or August connection is energetically significant or not. You’ll know if this is something meaningful that you should pay attention to, or if it is just coincidental B.S. that you can brush right off.
That, I suspect, is where all the scammy hype rip-off Tarot readers and psychics go off the rails by making some big, ego-inflating deal out of common coincidence rather than supporting your individual intuition.
Don’t listen to me, don’t listen to the cards. Listen to your own instincts. The cards, and my role as a reader is just to support your understanding with a few little nudges, creative prompts and lots of food for thought. In the end, your thinking matters more than any coincidences that might come along to fuel it.
Which brings us circling right back around to the the two-card message for today.
Swords have to do with mind, intellect and action. I’m reminded of a line from some 90s song “free your mind, and the rest will follow.” It was some pop song girl group, and I don’t remember a single thing else about it other than that one lyric, but that one line has always stuck. They don’t call it a hook for nothing. This is the message from the 8 of swords today. The card is talking about freeing your mind.
The figure on the card is surrounded by swords and blindfolded. One of the key ideas of this card is that freedom is still possible even when the odds seem stacked against you. The key is to use creative problem solving. In this Pamela Smith card image, the figure’s feet are bare but unbound, and there is a gap in the swords encircling the person. They’d have to be really, really REALLY careful but they could feel their way to freedom given enough time. There would be a price to pay in shallow cuts, but the freedom is possible with the right action.
The eight of cups is connected to emotions more than the cutting intellect and precise careful action suggested by the eight of swords. The eight of cups is about the bittersweet moving on from heartbreak into the future, from emotional devastation into emotional healing. Sure – there were good times. Sure – there were painful times. But sometimes the only way forward is through, and the only way through is to let the past go.
Now put both cards together – free your mind AND free your heart. For true freedom, both mind (attitude, understanding) and heart (feelings, intentions) have to change AND move on from the old ways. Both cards imply movement from a bad situation toward a better future.
Thank you all so much for reading and listening today. I hope everyone, including podcast listeners will follow the free blog, as I always have some blog only content in the works. You can opt in by putting your email in the box in the right hand column of the blog website (link is in the episode description for podcast folks). You can unsubscribe at any time, although obviously I hope you won’t. Instead of unsubscribing, send a blog comment. I use the feedback to improve things or get content ideas. So thanks in advance for any comments, questions, likes, subs, follows or shares that you can spare.
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Thanks again! See you at the next sip!
Members only learn to read Tarot post
The weekly learn-to-read-Tarot post is up for Tarot Table and Patron of the Tarot Arts members on the members only ko-fi blog.
Members can read the post HERE
There is a difference between falling off of a cliff and jumping off of one on purpose.
Hello and welcome to the freshly renamed TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’ve jumped off the marketing best practices cliff and everything TaoCraft will gradually change over to Sage Words Tarot.
The name change feels totally different this time.
In 2018 when I re-branded from Modern Oracle to TaoCraft Tarot it felt like that scene from The Walking Dead tv series where they watch a cabin the woods burn down as a symbolic release of the character Daryl’s past and old self-image. The change from Modern Oracle to Tao Craft was moderately terrifying because it took every Tarot everything I’d built since 2003 and blew it to bits. It was like taking a step backwards off a cliff and hoping you don’t crash on the rocks below.
Sure, it was all rebuilt as a stronger, more cohesive brand that was following all the good marketing advice I could get my hands on. TaoCraft was far more organized from a business standpoint AND far more aligned with my authentic self. It’s a deeply meaningful as a name to me…but I don’t think it resonates very well with anyone else. I felt like I always needed to explain it. All the T and C sounds made it a little confusing to spell and that’s all a problem because Tarot is about making things clearer, not more confusing. Tarot isn’t about me, it’s about YOU.
Sage is a pen name, which protects privacy a little better for both of us in these days of openly growing theocratic tendencies in this country. Christian nationalism and evangelical bigotry is a real thing. I want to do all I can to make this a safe space for my fellow atheists and the lgbtquia community that is so important to me.
Sage the herb evokes cozy feelings. It has a familiar scent and taste from home cooking and holiday turkeys.
In aromatherapy, Sage incense and smudge sticks can clear negative energy, calm anxiety and promote a general feeling well being.
Most of all, the word sage means something or someone who is wise. The word speaks to all of the wisdom that has accumulated around the Tarot cards over the centuries.
Safety, comfort, calmness, wisdom and a feeling that things will be ok in the end are all qualities that I hope you’ll experience if we do a Tarot reading together. All of these are qualities I hope you’ll experience when you read the blog or listen to the podcast.
And THAT, my friends, is what I’m calling an introduction, not an explanation.
This time the Fool’s cliff feels more like the movie Ironman 2 where Tony Stark gleefully jumped off the side of a building while yelling to Pepper “you complete me!”
Fresh leaps of faith, fresh jumps off of buildings in your super suit aren’t necessarily foolish. Fresh leaps can make things better for everyone. No matter how long you’ve been doing something, you can always make a fresh start in the new year.
Or the new day.
Or the new moment.
Thank you for reading and listening. I’m glad you are here. See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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