Welcome to Halloween weekend 2021. Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.
The two of coins is a positive, upbeat card. It is the pentultimate card of balance, second only to the Temperance card in the major arcana. Balance is a bid deal in the holistic health world. Our banner tagline is pretty much “mind, body and spirit in balance.”
Balance implies opposites. It really is like the classic balance scales we’ve all seen, like on the justice statues at court houses. If one side is given more weight than the other, the scales are thrown out of balance.
Around Halloween and Winter Solstice, this kind of balance reminds me of Lynn Andrews’ book Crystal Woman. In it, light and vision are used as another example of balance. In complete darkness, we can’t see anything. By the same token, if there is complete light, our eyes are dazzled and we still can’t see a thing. It is only in the interplay between light and dark that we are able to see anything.
Halloween is a valuable holiday. In reminding us of returning darkness, we are reminded how necessary that darkness is in the balance of things.
Yesterday we talked about Sitting Bulls quote “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.” It’s all well and good to feed the good dog but I think there is more to it than that. It pays to come to know, train and perhaps befriend the bad one. Just as shadow is integral to good vision, knowing our dark side is intergral to personal growht and a truly authentic life.
Long story short, we live in a world of light and dark, good and evil. Balance is the way. Starved dogs become desperate and more violent increasing the fights. Make choices and feed the inner good dog, but don’t ignore or try to starve the other into oblivion. Rather train it, perhaps befriend it. Compassion is the thing to feed both dogs.
Just like the Death card, The Lovers has a TV & movie reputation apart from the card’s actual, traditional meaning. Everyone loves the Lovers. But it isn’t always about finding the love of your life or a grand romance.
The Lovers card is about any deep down desire, not necessarily the torrid romance novel kind. Often in a reading this card will advise figuring out what you really want in order to take steps toward it. Choice is less popular as a card meaning, but it has been associated with the Lovers across many decks and references.
Not only do you choose who and what you love, you choose TO love at all.
There is a quote attributed to Sitting Bull*: “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.”
Put that with today’s card and you get the message to, metaphorically speaking, choose the dog you feed.
If you have followed the blog over the past year or so, we’ve talked about general zeitgeist cultural energies, and how all those stresses had affected energy sensitive people. The fear surrounding the pandemic and political upheaval here in the U.S. had been ringing a lot of peoples bells so to speak.
That general energy resonance is still fairly strong, but it has changed. It’s been shifting for a while now. The resonant bell-ringing among clients seems a little less widespread. The focus has shifted from the collective to the individual, from external to the internal, from practical physical realm survival to internal emotional and spiritual quality of life. It is a time for choosing the dog we feed.
And I have to emphasize the part where Sitting Bull describes it as an internal struggle. If it is projected as anything but a personal internal choice, the adage can go entirely off the rails.
My mind is also drawn to the Tina Turner song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” from the 1980s movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome . We’ve survived the energy and emotional thunderdome of 2020-21.
We have a once in a lifetime chance to choose how we step out of the dome and move beyond it. Every moment of every day we have a chance to choose which parts of ourselves we nourish. Today’s card suggests that we choose love.
Swords symbolize the element of air. They can denote action. Historically they are sometimes associated with negative things because swords were at one time the primary weapon of war. It would be like trying to find spiritual guidance from a card with a machine gun on it.
Today, the energy is lying with the air, mentality and intellect side of the card. A classic meaning for the card is being of two minds about something. Logic and reason are – or at least should be – our first go-to for making major life decisions. Sometimes, however, intellect fails.
Emotion seldom makes the best decision. But neither does cold hard logic and intellect when it is used in isolation, with no emotion or compassion at all.
The figure on the card is blindfolded. That signals the indecision that is part of the card’s meaning, while it also hints that following emotion or intuition might seem like a blind leap of irrational faith to the outside observer. Only the person with their hands on the swords, the person who knows both their logical rationale.
The figure on the card is also seated in front of water, the classic symbol for emotions, wisdom and intuition that we so often see on cards from the suit of cups. That’s not surprising, because people are more than one thing. People are complex. Ideas and experiences have a great deal of overlap as do the card’s symbolism and meanings. Water – emotion and heart – has the person’s back so to speak.
When logic is blinded, heart and compassion supports. When you can’t see the answer, resting in a place of compassion is enough.
Most of the time we say it is a card about balance. It’s also fair to say it is about dynamic equilibrium. Think of a spinning coin or a bicycle in motion or a toy top or a gyroscope. There of lots of examples of things that keep their balance through motion. I’ll leave it to the physics people to explain how that happens and angular momentum and such.
The Tao Te Ching reminds us of a similar but very very broad principle: Living things are supple, able to be in motion. Stiff and motionless is, well, dead.
Movement, and by extension movement as a gateway to balance, is the normal way of things. Feeling overwhelmed when there is too much going on is also the normal way of things.
Life can be a juggling act. Multitasking can make each individual task seem bigger than it really is. But try not to let it get to you. Simplify as much as you can, then have at it. You got this!
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Today’s card is the Magician from the major arcana.
The magician card is traditionally associated with transformation and manifestation. Today’s energy goes along with both. To change things, to transform them, you have to do something differently. To make something, to manifest anything, you first have to first do something.
The broader concept of change would, of course, fall under the Death card. The focus here is cause and effect. The focus here is in the doing. Do nothing and there is no change for the death card to symbolize. The science folks call that inertia.
The magician card often has the symbols of the four minor arcana suits on it. The magician uses all of the elements, all of the concepts from the minor suits and applies them to the concept of transformation and manifestation. The magician incorporates all the ways of doing. All of the suits have various connections to thinking, doing, deciding, withholding, experiencing, all of which are elements of transformation and manifestation.
First decide what you want to change or create. Then do something to start on that new path. Lay the foundation. Do the thing that becomes the cause for the desired effect. Anyone can work that magic.
Thank you for reading and listening to “A sip of Tarot.” on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and Clairvoyant Confessional podcast. Stay tuned for more (almost) daily meditation style Tarot readings in the time it takes to sip from a cup of morning coffee.
My favorite TV quote is from Stranger Things “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation. Coffee. And contemplation.
Now, in the time it takes to sip from your coffee…
ok, ok….tea…hot lemon water…can of Jolt…bloody mary…whatever your favorite first beverage may be…
you can have a (almost) daily morning (ish) one card meditation Tarot reading. Available here on the blog, but also on YouTube, ko-fi and Clairvoyant Confessional podcast
Today’s card is the Chariot from the major arcana portion of the Tarot deck.
I always think of this as the jet pilot card. That is probably influenced by all of the Richard Bach books I read in my 20s. Whether it is a chariot in a race like the old movie Ben Hur, driving the beltway at rush hour or flying a supersonic aircraft, you have to pay attention to what you are doing or end up in a crumpled heap somewhere. I’ve never done any of those things, but I imagine it is a heck of a lesson in mindfulness.
Besides helping you to survive at high rates of speed, paying attention does some other nifty stuff at the complete other end of the velocity spectrum.
Mindfulness consecrates.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein hints at this too. Toward the end of the book, I think it was Mary Jane who described the title character, Valentine Michael Smith “…when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe and the moment is eternal…”
When you pay full attention to where you are it makes that place special. When you pay full attention it makes that moment special. When you pay full attention to another person it makes magic for both of you.
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Wands cards in general have to do with the element of fire, and our relationship with ourselves. Wands cards are about our inner world, but our feelings are not entirely separate from physical events.
The six of wands in particular often symbolizes peace, a rest after a struggle of some kind. Pamela Smith’s famous artwork has a knight, a warrior, on horseback carrying a laurel wreath which is a symbol of peace. The tone isn’t so much one of a conquering hero or occupying force, but the feeling is of being on the winning side. This card is about peaceful feelings, and feelings of satisfaction after a job well done, despite the hints of recent combat or struggles.
Compliments feel good, especially when they are linked with a personal sense of achievement like this. If you haven’t received a pat on the back for doing work, try giving a word of encouragement to someone else. Any tiny little thank you will do. Then enjoy, because with compliments the good feelings flow in both directions.
At least it is as I pulled this card and type this post.
Intuition is weird. It is very Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If you look at a card reading through the lens of a moment in time, it cuts it off from the greater flow of time. Kind of like screen capturing a movie as it plays.
Some readings, like today, are meant for that. They are intended for the moment.
Doing Tarot readings on the internet is weird.
Whatever you read or write can be accessed anywhere at any time by anyone. Tarot, intuition, energy and spirit are good with that. After all, this present moment is a connected, unified part of that big giant wibbly wobbly lump of everything. If you look at a card through the lens of that unified timelessness, it cuts it off from the present moment a little bit.
Like Heisenberg, you can know a particles exact location or you can know how fast it is moving but not both at the same time. Same thing here. You can connect a card to this present moment and hope it resonates with whatever other moment someone stumbles across it, or you can connect it to the larger energy which doesn’t capture the moment of the reading.
This card, here, now today is resonating with a reading for the moment.
It’s Monday.
Be kind to the head of your household, whoever it might be. Mom. Dad. You.
It is one of those pour some coffee, time to make the donuts, this is how the sausage gets made, get to it, get through it, no frills kind of Mondays. Good luck and godspeed *raises mug of coffee*
Speaking of mugs, any support you can spare goes toward creating the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast, the card draw videos, and the blog. A Sip of Tarot (almost) daily meditation nano-episodes are available on multiple platforms. Thank you so much for listening, watching and reading!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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