Tag: card meaning

Today’s Accomplishment

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today is a day. Having one is an accomplishment!

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the four of swords.

There are reasons for all of the lore around Tarot decks.

Bottom line, they are bits of heavy paper with pictures on them. Full stop.

It’s not the cards, it’s the person using them and how they are used. They are the big theater screen where we can project our intuition and make it easier to see. They are a giant mirror that reflects ourselves so we can see that better too.

The genius in Pamela Smiths treatment of the minor arcana number cards is that she hits on very archetypal, foundational, core ideas. It’s hard to improve them. So, so many decks are rightfully derived from that body of work. Before Smith’s work, as I understand it, most decks had pips…a grouping of the suit’s symbols…instead of fully fledged images like the ones she created.

Some of the cards are fairly consistent across all of he derived decks. The three of swords is a good example. Almost every three of swords that I’ve seen has some iteration of heart and swords and something getting stabbed. The four of swords has much more variation. In the RWS deck, you see a knight in repose, taking a lil’ nap with all of his favorite pointy objects, no stabbing in sight. Mark Evans, artist for the Witches Tarot, depicts a grumpy looking lady with one sword in hand, dress swirling to denote movement and activity, with the other three swords close by. It’s not a particularly restful image. Here Lenny Magner give us four disembodied heads stabbed with swords for the Alleyman’s Tarot. The faces look sleepy, possibly dead, and winds up being more disconcerting than restful. Seven Dane Asmund’s interpretation of the card resonates with this image. The Alleyman’s Notebook interprets it as having to do with self-doubt, where he writes “nothing sticks like the daggers we put in ourselves.”

As disparate as it all seems, all of these different images fit together like pieces of a bigger picture.

Think of the ubiquitous and sometime slightly annoying email courtesy of telling people to “have a great day.”

Not every day is great. Some days are a hot mess. Other times you need to turn down the wattage and have just a day. Any day. A no big deal, kinda routine, go make the donuts day. Those days are as great as any other. When we expect perfection from ourselves, it is all too easy to slip into stabbing ourselves in the head with self-doubt. A little rest and repose from self-imposed expectations can be a wonderful thing. Even the Witches Tarot sword swinging grumpy girl has a part to play. External activity, working and adulting still has to happen which covers the action aspect of the swords cards in general. Sometimes you have to, as the shoe commercials used to say, just do it. Swords are also associated with intellect and the mind. That is the kind of rest and repose the four of swords talks about today.

Give being your own worst critic a rest.

Nevermind great. Sometimes just having a day is an accomplishment.

Thanks so much for reading and listening! I’ll see you at the next sip!

The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page and become a Patron of the Tarot Arts for exclusive content, special offers, and private readings.

Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows, private reading orders, questions and comments are always, always, appreciated.

The deck pictured is the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission.

Hawkeye’s Head

Wth the YouChoose Interactive Tarot on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast you do just that: choose. You choose when to read and watch. You choose which card and how to apply it.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

To start the week, let’s do a “you choose” style reading. It’s Monday morning here, so naturally a look at the energies for the week ahead is top of mind. You can use the card you choose to look ahead to any day or any week at any time you see this, or you can use it as a general guidance meditation or get some clarity about a particular topic or question. As alway, you choose.

There is a video of the real world card draw above if you are reading the blog, or on the spotify version of the podcast if I can get it to work. If you are listening to the podcast, imagine a circle, a star and a square. Pick a shape to pick your card. Choose from circle, star or square. You can pause the video or podcast if you need more time to think about it. Then restart to see which card goes with the shape you chose; circle, star or square.

Or, on the blog, just keep reading.

Circle: Six of Wands. Be generous and kind to yourself when it comes to mental and spiritual things. Don’t waste brain cells on worry. Stressful times need balance. If you have been extra active or extra stressed, you might have to deliberately be more quiet or more isolated than is usually your nature to balance things out. The six of wands is often associated with peace after war, calm after struggle. Think of this card as the mental and spiritual equivalent of taking a nap after a hard workout at the gym. The strongest hurricanes have the lowest pressure in the center eye of the storm. Be the eye of the hurricane.

Star: Ten of Swords. When life gets you down, it’s ok to down stay there a minute and gather your thoughts before getting up like the unstoppable melty-metal terminator robot that you are. The point isn’t that you get up in a dramatic martyr-like show of strength. The point is to get up at your best and ready to function at your best despite past failures. Sometimes the point is to get up at all.

Square: Justice. Work smarter, not harder. Detachment, balance, and level-headedness are your friends. The Justice card is a card of wisdom. It’s hard to make really profound, life altering decisions on the fly. Sometimes following your impulse, intuition and gut instinct is the exact right thing to do. If you chose this card – now is not the time for that sort of thing. Now is a time for pondering, intellect and logic. It’s like the six of wands folks just heard: the most powerful hurricanes have the lowest pressures in the center eye. You need to be the eye of the hurricane, too.

Taken together, the energy this week seems to be asking for cooler heads and calmer emotions to prevail. Keep some humor about it all. A little light humor can go a long, long way in diffusing fear and anxiety, so keep some dad jokes at the ready. You just might be the one who needs them.

Remember Hawkeye’s wise observations on the TV show MASH? Use your head, like Hawkeye. This week’s cards remind me of the time he said “If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, then you probably haven’t checked with your answering service lately.”

Thanks for listening! I’ll see you at the next sip!

The blog, podcast and YouTube channel are not monetized and depend solely on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on Ko-fi. Shop sales, commissioned readings, and memberships all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. Your likes, subs, shares, private reading orders, questions and comments are always appreciated!

It’s a web, not a rope

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today’s card is The World, especially for earth day 2022

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

It’s Earth Day today. I can’t think of a more appropriate card than the World, so I shuffled through the deck and drew it on purpose.

There is nothing really all that mysterious about the World card. This is a place where the utterly practical and deeply spiritual meet.

In the fourteenth century, in the earliest known days of Tarot, the world was pretty much as big of a concept as you can get. The deck as we know it first emerged around the time of the Renaissance, just before great scientific minds like Copernicus and Galileo and philosophers like Spinoza and Bruno began to think in terms bigger than the world. In many ways the abstraction of the World in the major arcana Tarot card and the modern concept of the cosmos have much in common. Much as in everything.

As Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is everything that is or ever was or ever will be.” The Earth is an inseparable part of that. An itsy bitsy teeny tiny speck of it, but part of it. So are we; each of us individually but also collectively as part of the human species.

Or as Max Landis et al wrote in the TV adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency, “everything’s connected.”

So yeah, symbols and ideas represented on pieces of cardstock can affect your choices. Your choices inform your actions, your actions become causes, and causes create effects. Tarot cards help you create your future but they don’t predict it.

So yeah, hatred and bigotry really does reverberate out to the cosmos. But so do thoughts of peace and compassion. Both are subtle causes with subtle effects, but effects nonetheless.

So yeah, that one plastic shopping bag really does make a difference, along with that one solar cell phone recharge and that one meatless meal.

So yeah, the atoms of your body really were born in long ago stars.

One of the best things we can do for the Earth on Earth day is to think of it all as if we were in outer space. Like Copernicus. Or the Apollo astronauts. Or the World Tarot card. See the Earth as a whole. See it as a tiny fragile ball of rock painted in a thin layer of a miracle. We are a mote of dust painted in a near-nothing layer of life. If the world is a speck in the cosmos, how does our few miles thick biosphere stand up to that comparison? Such a tiny home for something as enormous as the human mind and consciousness that is capable of knowing and understanding the Cosmos itself. Try celebrating Earth day by reading Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Celebrate Earth day by learning what the minds who live upon it have learned about the universe that contains our little Earth-speck. When we think of our world from that perspective, renewable energy seems easy. The little things we all can do become microscopically trivial, to the extent that we should burn in shame for not doing them.

It’s a web, not a rope. When you pluck one strand, the whole thing vibrates. Thoughts pluck. Words pluck harder. But actions twang the whole thing in a big way.

Or break it.

It…meaning that grand everything…is part of you. You can’t cause harm or think hate without it affecting something. Something including you. There is a good chance the thread you pluck will vibrate back to you. There is nothing good or bad about it. It’s just the mechanics of how things work. Good or bad is up to you to decide. Whatever you decide it is, that’s what reverberates. What goes around, comes around, however you judge it to be. What you send out into the world comes back to you sooner or later, one way or another.

Send well.

Thank you for readings and listening. Your likes, subs, shares, follows, reading orders, questions and comments are always, always appreciated.

The blog, podcast and the companion videos on YouTube are not monetized and depend on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot Ko-fi page to become a Patron of the Tarot Arts and get exclusive content in the ko-fi blog, private readings and members-only special offers.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Nasa.gov photo from Curiosity rover of Earth from Mars

Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Publishing Goblin llc and Seven Dane Asmund used with permission, featuring the “BNF again” world card from the Jeude Minchiate de Fantaisie. Image of Earth from Mars from nasa.gov, to the best of my knowledge is in the public domain.

The Makings of Magic

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day (or evening) in the time it takes to sip from your coffee (or tea). Today: The Alleyman’s Tarot Lightning in a bottle and the makings of magic

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today we are drawing from the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund of Publishing Goblin LLC, used with permission. It’s a big deck, with one booster pack already in it and yes, you bet I’m planning on getting the other booster packs if possible.

I’m not a collector by nature, but I’ve been around collectors and I understand the passion. It’s not a greed thing or a materialistic thing. It’s a surround yourself with symbols of something you love thing. As a professional Tarot reader and Tarot writer slash blogger decks appeals to the maker part of me. It’s a “right tool for the right job” kind of vibe. On one hand they are a collection of specialized precision tools, yet on the other hand “every tool is a hammer” as the Adam Savage book puts it.

I know some Tarot readers who have dozens of decks. The Alleyman’s Tarot is my eleventh. I’m enjoying it even more than expected. It is a virtuoso deck, that pushes your comfort zone just by the vast array of tones, images and artwork. It’s also challenging by virtue of the cards like this one that are absolutely gorgeous, but not traditional RWS or lenormand symbolism. I can’t imagine anyone with the wherewithal to collect well over one hundred decks, but the vast array of different cards all beautifully curated by the creator gives you a taste of exactly that. Seven Dane Asmund has pushed all of our Tarot reading envelopes. Now it is up to us to haul it back in.

I’ve been watching the new season of the Witcher, so the Mages of Artuza came quickly to mind when I saw the lightning in a bottle card – specifically the scene where initiates were in a cave with a hole in the roof during a thunderstorm and were required to capture lightning in a bottle in order to become fully fledged Mages.

The phrase “lightning in a bottle” has been around much longer than TV shows. Generally, it means sudden, unexpected, unconventional but huge success at something rare, at something once thought nearly impossible. Lighting in a bottle is a get rich from YouTube, put a ding in the universe type of luck-meets-skill achievement.

Reliable origins of idioms like this one are just as hard to find. A quick search of the google machine gives you the idea that it refers to eighteenth century experiments with electricity like Benjamin Franklin’s kite and Leyden jars. Leyden jars are conductive material on either side of non-conductive glass in such a way that it will hold a small electrical charge. It used to be party entertainment to get a little spark from them, kind of like scuffing your sock feet across the carpet and touching a door knob on purpose. In the poetic language of the day, those little sparks were literally lightning in a bottle.

The Alleyman’s Notebook that accompanies the deck connects this card with a situation that can’t be forced. That interpretation fits in with the pop culture analogy. You can’t MAKE lightning strike. You can’t MAKE opportunities happen but you can position yourself in such a way as to be in the conditions that more favorable for the right opportunity to happen. You can put yourself in a mental and physical space to take full advantage of it if it does.

You can’t make lightning strike any given place at any given time. Putting real world electrocution aside for a moment, if you stand on an iron rich rock near salt water ocean with your arm up in the air during a thunderstorm, there is a better chance that you, the lightning and a bottle will all wind up in the same place at the same time.

There is a practical, mundane, banal side of catching lightning in a bottle. It may seem lucky or miraculous, but the most unlikely success still has elements of practical intellect and persistent effort. As Thomas Edison famously said “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. Lightning in a bottle is random luck plus the courage and cleverness to take advantage of unexpected opportunity with a healthy dose of effort to follow it all through to fruition. These are the elements of mundane magic available to anyone.

There is one more element. A subtle one, the one that makes you into a lighting rod and gives you the power to contain it in the bottle. This is the part that makes the apprentice into the sorcerer. It’s the part that takes us back to the rainy rocks at the witch school of Artuza.

Harmonize with nature.

Lau Tzu gave us this advice in the Tao Te Ching a long, long, long time ago. If you are a grower by nature and you are in a sunny field, plant as you wish. If you are by the sea, step out onto the rainy rock and lift your bottle to the sky with confidence.

Thank you for reading and listening. The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page to become a Patron of the Tarot Arts which gives you access to exclusive content, private email readings and members-only special offers. Proceeds support the production of these free to access posts and episodes. Of course your likes, subs, shares, follows, reading orders, questions and comments are always, always appreciated.

See you at the next sip.

Tidal Flow

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: The Moon and psychic tidal flow.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blogcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Moon from the major arcana.

Major arcana cards, being what they are, have more threads of meaning and are often a balance of heavier opposites than we see in the minor arcana.

The moon is associated with spiritual journeying, wisdom, intuition, psychic ability, dreams. Ted Andrews, in his Animal Wise Tarot deck, also ties in changing, communication and guidance. The point about change captures my attention today.

The Moon card is very much tied to the element of water and its connotations and its ties with the suit of cups. I feel like the Moon is connecting with the Queen of Cups card a little bit. The literal moon’s gravity reaches into the depths of the ocean and pulls it all into high tide. The Queen of Cups is said to be looking into her cup of water to pull spiritual knowledge from the depths of the human psyche.

There are psychic tides as much as there are literal ones. Our intuitive energies ebb and flow as much as physical ones. Self care extends to the spirit as much as to the physical. Sometimes tides surgh and we are called to speak our truths from rooftops. Sometimes they ebb and time comes for us to take in rest and comfort in the truths of ritual and shouted ideas of others.

Listen to your inner spiritual tides as well as the demands of corporal being. The Moon card is a call to your spiritual tidal flow the care and attention that it needs today.

Thank you so much for listening.

Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi to get your seat at the Tarot Table or become a Patron of the Tarot Arts. Members get exclusive content and special offers not available anywhere else. Memberships support the creation of this free to access blog and podcast.

Of course, any likes, subs, shares, follows, private readings, questions or comments are always appreciated.

Conquest Through Surrender

TaoCraft Tarot Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: Conquest through surrender with the Death and Hawkmoth cards

Welcome to Tao Craft Short Sip. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is a new one for me. It is the Hawkmoth card created by Literal Crow for the Literal Crow Tarot and used here in the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.

This is a new card for me. So far this has been one of the most easily readable decks I’ve owned yet. Maybe it’s because it’s Monday, but I had to look this one up to even begin. The Alleyman’s notebook begins by connecting this to the death card and the life cycle of insects. Like the death card, this card is about change but with less foresight.

It reminds me a little bit of insect related quotes.

I’m not sure who actually wrote it, but the Morticia Addams character said “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”

Author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach wrote “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

One of my favorite quotes lately is related, but thankfully leaves out the bugs. Adam Savage reminds us to “follow the process, not the plan.”

In essence, change is inevitable. With the death card, the change is a foreseeable, knowable thing. I’ve seen the death card most often at bachlorette parties of all things. Not because marriage is death or any such 1950’s tropes like that. It’s because marriage is a life altering change. You’ll never be an unmarried single person again. Even if the marriage ends you are not single again, you are divorced or what have you. The death card speaks to a known, forward looking albeit life altering change. The quality we assign to the change is beside the point. Marriage is a perfect example. The old single you is gone forever, but old dies to make way for something wonderful.

I think the Hawkmoth card is less deliberate. It is about a change that blind-sides you. It is about blurry, unplanned, undirected change. If the Death card walks up and lops your head off, the Hawkmoth card is change by a thousand paper cuts. It is about long term, gradual, almost imperceptible molding of a new you.

For a new you to emerge from that process, it takes a degree of surrender. In a cave, stalagtites and staligmites don’t fight the dripping water, they surrender to change and process that builds them up and makes them strong.

Some changes require our evolution. Some changes require that we surrender to them in order to conquer the greatest challenge of them all:

ourselves.

Thank you so much for listening!

The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on your support. Please join me at the TaoCraft Tarot Table or become a Patron of the Tarot Arts for exclusive content, monthly newsletter and member-only special offers. Click HERE or see the link in the episode description for details.

Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows, private reading orders, questions and comments are always, always appreciated!

See you at the next sip!

More than it feels

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: Strength from the major arcana and revisiting reversals

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it take to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is Strength from the major arcana, inverted.

This is another good chance to give my standard issue speech about inverted or reversed cards. Reversed cards are ones that turn over upside down relative to the person doing the reading.

The relative to the person doing the reading part is, to my thinking, much more important than the upside-down, reversed or inverted part. The card is perfectly fine as it lies. I don’t mean to go all Obi-wan on you, but the reversal is specific to a certain point of view. To the person across the table, the card is right side up. The card is the card, the only difference is how you look at it.

The tradition is to change the meaning of a card to its opposite when it turns up reversed. Usually that so-called opposite is really the darker, less socially popular, or negative side of the card.

As I see it, that flip flop in the meaning runs the risk of letting a certain toxic positivity leak into our readings. Right side up cards are a bit easier to read from a pure physiologic, visual standpoint. I don’t know about you, but I have an innate bias toward right side up cards, just as a matter of identifying what the heck you are looking at.

Depending on where you stand in the room, all cards are always right side up or upside down. All the cards are always everything and that is part of Tarot’s inherent value. Tarot has value in the way it opens our mind and our thinking to all the possibilities, even the hard to look at upside down ones.

All the cards are everything all of the time.

My favorite quote from the original 90s version of the movie The Craft is from the scene where the bookstore owner explains the nature of magic and spells to the protagonist Sarah “True magic is neither black or nor white – it is both because nature is both. Loving and cruel all at the same time … the only good or bad is in the heart of the witch. Life keeps a balance on its own.”

Connect that to the yin-yang symbol and Taoist philosophy and you know why I named this website and podcast what it is.

So if reversed cards don’t represent a thing and it’s opposite or some sort of positive vs negative duality, what do reversed cards tell us?

Sometimes, nothing.

I read reversed cards as meaning that there is something up with how the card’s meaning is being used or manifested in life. There is something blocked or turbulent or glitchy with the energy flow that the card and its position within a layout represents.

Author Scott Cunningham is known for saying “The feeling is the power” If you are feeling strong today great! Have at it!

If not, that’s fine. No one has the capacity to be perfect every moment, and we certainly don’t feel that way every moment.

The Strength card always has an element of trusting yourself. If you are feeling strong, then you have to trust it to use it. If you are not feeling strong, then you still have to trust yourself. It is a matter of trust that your inner strength is still there, still fully functioning.

Do the thing. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to enjoy it. You don’t have to act happy about it when you aren’t. You can, however still do what needs done because your strength is more than it feels.

Thank you for reading and listening!

The blog, podcast, and youtube channel are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraftTarot ko-fi page to become a member of the TaoCraft Tarot Table and be a patron of these Tarot arts. Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows and reading orders through the blog website are always, always appreciated.

Thanks again and I’ll see you at the next sip!

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Rest and Contemplate

Cut through the noise of social media and the static of online Tarot posts to get something a little more personal. You choose your card and get it’s interpretation.

https://youtu.be/OHkR9YXdeNQ

Welcome to YouChoose Interactive Tarot on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

This post works just like the name says: you choose. You choose your card and you choose how to apply it. It’s Monday morning where I am right now, so my mind is drawn to the flow of energy for the week ahead. Overall it feels like a time to rest and contemplate. This feels like a time to gather your energy and regroup, recover from recent efforts or as “Bob the Writing Cat” on instagram often says – to “gird your loins” because it is Monday and the week is coming.

But, of course, it could be something entirely different for you.

If you are listening to audio only on the podcast, there is a link in the description to the blog post where you can watch the youtube video and see how all this is playing out with the real-world card draw. I’ve added the shape cards as a reference to make it easier to imagine and to pick a card from the audio only, but if seeing it would help, the visual is here for you.

First things first. Let’s choose. I’ve shuffled the Tarot deck and picked three random cards out of the five shape cards. Today we have square, triangle and wavy lines.

Choose a shape. Take a minute, take a deep breath. If you are watching the video, pause if you need more time then restart to see the card reveal. If you are listening, imagine the shapes. Choose the one that feels right for today; square, wavy lines or triangle.

Square gets the Four of Cups

Triangle get the Ace of Pentacles or Coins

Wavy Lines gets the Four of Swords

Four of Cups feels like validation. People are closed as it seems. Lines of communication are not flowing well, but it is temporary and it’s ok. It just isn’t a time to push on the giving or receiving in. If others are up in your grill but you need them to step back and wait a little, honor that feeling. If you are the one trying to get the message through and other people just can’t get the message or seemingly won’t listen honor that too. It just isn’t the time. Let them have their moment. There is no sense in beating your head against the wall. This isn’t a good time to push or be too assertive any more than it is a good time to be imposed upon.

The Ace of Pentacles feels like a good news is on the horizon card. It feels consistent with the physical world, money and career vibe that is traditionally associated with pentacles. It’s no wonder some decks call them coins instead. This feels like payday in a small way. It feels like getting a return on work already done, time already invested. Time transforms. Things are coming back around, but it feels like it is in unexpected but valuable ways. It feels like a transformation toward something very different but more valuable to this moment. The mental image is a diamond. Diamonds are made of carbon, but elemental carbon is a very different thing when it isn’t in the high pressure crystal lattic form we call diamonds. Don’t overlook the diamond that is coming back from the carbon you gave a long time ago. If you gave grape juice, don’t walk around looking for more grape juice when you are being handed a glass of wine.

The Four of Swords really captures the essence of that rest, repair, regroup energy we were talking about earlier. Swords cards and knight cards carry a sense of activity and motion and doing. This card balances that. It is the yin to the knight of swords yang. This card is all about rest, but rest with an active purpose. This is resting deliberately so you can be at your best during the next battle, the next active time that is going to come. For those of you who picked this card, rest and contemplate fast. I have a hunch the restful, contemplative mode will shift for you before it does for everyone else.

Thank you for reading, watching and listening to TaoCraft Tarot blog, you tube channel and podcast.

I’m not monetized on any of these platforms and this free to access Tarot content 100% relies on your support. Please visit the new, expanded TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page to see all the ways you can be a patron to the Tarot arts. I appreciate any likes, subs, shares, blog follows, reading orders, or shop purchases that you can spare to help me keep this project going. Thank you.

See you at the next sip!

Harshness Begets Chaos

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: The judgement card and rising from the ashes

https://youtube.com/shorts/IPTsVtFKL7o?feature=share

Welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is Judgement.

If you have read the blog for a while, you probably already know this card is one of my nemesis in the deck. Both Judgement and the Hierophant as it is drawn in the RWS deck is a little trigger-ish. Luckily it isn’t the religious judgement day aspect of the card stepping forward here.

On the other hand, who the heck uses the word “begets” outside of Shakespeare and the old Testament? The phrase “Harshness Begets Chaos” just dropped into my head when I turned the card this morning, so I’ll roll with it. It must mean something to somebody out there in cyberspace.

I’m not the only one, by the way. When I say “dropped into my head” it refers to that pop of an idea that cartoons used to show as a light bulb turning on over a character’s head. My husband and our martial arts teacher call it “getting the download.” So when the muses, or spirit or intuition or your higher self or whatever you want to call it drops an idea into your head through your crown chakra like a fed ex delivery with an attitude, pay attention. It probably means something one way or another.

“Begets” is an odd word. So let’s say that harshness…or in the context of this card….harsh judgement results in chaos. It can be shattering to a young or vulnerable person. The word shattering also comes to mind. Although the artwork on this particular card is fluid and the word melt would be better than shattered, hard sharp edges of shattered emotions better describes the feelings that harsh judgement can evoke. On the card, the clear eyed image of a bird melts into poorly defined shapes and swirling colors.

It is beautiful the way the artist connects Judgement to a blue jay and, as the Alleyman’s notebook points out, a rising energy not unlike that of a phoenix rising from the ashes. This is where this newer card and the older RWS card overlap. Even within the religious imagery there is a notion of second chances, or rising up from a bad situation. If you have been on the receiving end of bigotry, or judgmentalism or shattered by other harsh circumstances, this can be seen as reassurance that you can rise from that. Know that you are seen by the universe.

The clear eyed bird sees those who can rise above. The clear eyed bird sees those who would tear down.

Ted Andrews associated blue jay energy with the Two of Swords and “the right use of power.” That is where today’s card veers from judgmentalism into judgement as in good judgement or use your own judgement.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Use your judgement when to be strong and when to be gentle.

But remember, the two are often the exact same thing.

Thank you so much for reading and listening! Thank you for all of your likes, subs, shares, blog follows, reading orders, questions and comments. Comments are open on the blog, so please let me know what you think, and what you want to see and hear in the blogcast.

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The blog and podcast will be quiet for the next four or five days, but I’ll still see you at the next sip. Have a good weekend!

Threshold to the Solstice

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, the four of wands and sacred liminal space.

Welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the four of wands, once again from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck compiled by Seven Dane Asmund, used here with permission. This card was made by Casi Cline.

The interesting thing about this particular card, is its emphasis on the structure in the foreground while the celebrations behind it are smaller and more distant than in the Pamela Smith art or in many other decks.

Very often the four wands are depicted as four posts or poles holding a garland or cloth in a way that is very akin to a Jewish chuppah wedding canopy or the sukkah from the harvest festival. In the recent “One for the Black Sheep” post, we saw this exact card only in reverse. We talked about the four of wands connecting to community celebration. Today a different energy steps forward. This is about liminal spaces, about sacred spaces, about thresholds.

While this card has a sturdier, gazebo sort of feeling to the structure in the front, I like that the front structure is typically presented as something light, temporary and largely symbolic. Sacred space doesn’t have to be Winchester Cathedral. Sacred space can exist, or be created anywhere. To my mind, home altars are far more significant and powerful than large uninhabited stone buildings.

The sacred space depicted on the four of wands is also a liminal space, meaning a place of transition. You don’t need stone walls because you ideally aren’t going to be for a prolonged amount time. Time becomes part of liminal of space. Going back to the home altar – it isn’t a spot you stand in long. It is a transition space and time into and out of connection with your spiritual practice. Time in a liminal space is often short, but important.

Today, the transition seems to be moving toward something very positive. Like a lot of readings over the past two years, I associate this with the global pandemic and the general zeitgeist energy that goes with that. Of course, the local vibe here in the eastern US steps forward the strongest.

Based on the last batch of publicly reported data I’ve seen – hospitalizations, deaths, waste water assessments and the like….I’m cautiously optimistic. I hope there is a celebration when we are fully past this, but I suspect it will be small and tempered. It will be a survivors celebration. Or at least I hope so. I hope everyone appreciates the magnitude of all that has happened and gives due respect to the multitudes who didn’t make it to the other side of the threshold with us.

The bonfire in the artwork very much brings to mind the summer solstice. Summer solstice is very much a social time and an auspicious time for parties. I went to a party once on the day of the solstice and we jumped over a bonfire. It was raining, we were indoors, and the bonfire consisted of a lit candle. But never sell symbolism short.

It was early days in my transition away from my evangelical upbringing. It was thrilling to be doing something so overtly Pagan, but beyond that, the feeling of magic and community was palpable. That tiny little candle delivered on what alternative spirituality was cracked up to be. This was one of the first of many experiences where non-christian spirituality walked its talk. It held up in actual practice in a way I’d not experienced before.

Sure, this is all major projection on my part. It’s almost Easter, my “I quit” anniversary from Christianity. But I also sense a strong transition energy out there that any of us can tap into. What do you want to change? My thoughts go to a social media Tarot reader who was talking about sobriety in a recent podcast. That takes courage – all good vibes to you fellow Tarot person from a rando fan on the internet. But that is the level of transition that is stepping forward here. It has a touch of the Magician card here too. While the Magician often has an element of outward, physical realm transformation and manifestation, today’s card has a feeling of profound inner transformation.

This is more than a beginning. This is next-level, next-phase energy. This is fully stepping into and fully engaging with your personal growth in a serious way. This is the threshold to a new day, a new party, a new bonfire, and the fullness of your light. As we celebrate the of day of longest sun on the solstice, it can be the time to fully show the new you that you have, through this sacred transition space and time, become.

Thank you so much for reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot.

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Thank you again. See you at the next sip!