Tag: cartomancy

Learn With Me: Lenormand, Snek

Let’s take a closer look at another card from my new Lenormand Tarot deck.

The more I work with this deck, the more it feels like a real-talk oracle card, really a thing of its own. Not a toxic positive overly optimistic oracle deck that sees the world through rose colored glasses, certainly, but not the depth and complexity that the 78 RWS or the 130+ card Alleyman’s Tarot. A bigger deck with smaller layouts seems to be the sweet spot for my intuition.

See, we learned something right there.

Finding – and frequently using – your intuitive comfort zone is not only OK but it is a good idea to better readings for yourself in the end. BUT at the same time learning, growing, and expanding that comfort zone is equally important. How else are you going to know what your optimum intuition conditions ARE?

That little bit of meta-analysis aside, let’s look at today’s card, the Snake.

All of the animal related ideas from the Bear last week still apply, just swap out the bear characteristics for snake characteristics.

Which I may not be super objective about.

I was born in the year of the wood snake – the green snake. After I learned about Taoism, feng shui, I ching and the like, I’ve always resonated with my chinese astrology symbol just as much if not more than my western Pisces sun sign. Although I don’t know anything about sidereal vs tropical astrology, all I know is that I’m Pisces in both, which in itself is supposed to mean something in itself, I think. I’ll leave that to the astrology adepts of you to figure out. But back to Snake.

The Christopher Butler guidebook to this Healing Light Lenormand deck reads the Snake as someone deceptive with malicious intent (Hey!)

Like owls, snakes are feared in some cultures, revered in others. Makes sense, because in the real world the old nope rope may be either harmless or lethal and you have to know something about them to be able to tell which is which. That’s not the snake being deceptive. It’s up to you to know “Red touches black, no worries for Jack. Red touches yellow, dangerous fellow.” and so on.

Knowledge arms you against deception, both literally and figuratively. But that’s another story.

Chinese astrology, the restaurant place mat edition, reflects the real world duality. Snake year people can be stubborn, opinionated, intimidating with a heaping helping of hubris to go with it. But at the same time they are viewed as intelligent, wise, creative and intuitive.

Or, as the Sirius Black character says in one of the Harry Potter books “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

Part of enlarging our comfort zone, part of learning new things is associating them with things we know well. Just like with the oracle dice from the last “Learn With Me” series I associate this with a few RWS Tarot cards, the Devil and the Three of Swords. Both acknowledge the malevolent side of human nature, cautions us to be on guard as well as asking us to be honest with ourselves about our deepest motives. Are we being deceptive, or are we being deceived.

As for the playing card inset, the queen of clubs, in my system of reading playing cards (I intend to write about that in an upcoming book) the Queen of Clubs is analogous to the Queen of Wands with a message of nurturing and self-care. Watching your back and taking care for your safety is, indeed, self-care.is

Thank you for reading! If you like what you’ve read, please like, follow, and share the blog (same goes for the socials). None of this is monetized, so please support these free collective readings with private readings, memberships and virtual coffees on sage words tarot page on ko-fi.

See you at the next sip!

Above, author’s photo including Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler Title © 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.

The Oracle’s Toolkit: Introduction

Introducing a new blog post series about ways to help improve intuition

I was talking with a really interesting, insightful, lovely person last evening (you know who you are … and I still think your intuitive light shines more than you realize.)

One of the things that came up in conversation is learning to read Tarot cards.

I can teach you how to do that, and have offered small group workshops on how to do one card meditation Tarot readings for a long time – until covid came along, anyway. My ebook PeaceTarot is the basis for the workshop. The book is a basic how-to guide for DIY daily Tarot. My hope is to bring the book and workshop to live, online, private one to one sessions this year. If you’d be interested in that kind of private zoom-meeting lesson, drop a comment below. Knowing that there is an iota of interest in private Tarot reading lessons will bump them up on the ever growing list of sh*t I want to do to make TaoCraft Tarot better for you.

BUT, as was also part of the conversation, Tarot isn’t for everyone. It does have layers and lots of moving parts and can get very confusing and overwhelming. That’s why we pros are here. You don’t have to juggle all of that if you don’t want to. We are, you know, professionals at sorting the cards out for you.

That is what makes Tarot so useful. It has the depth and complexity to encompass all that life can throw at us and still reflect each person’s unique energy message.

Even with all of that, get right down to it, Tarot is a tool. It is just one of dozens and bunches in an oracle’s toolkit. When you get down to the root essence of it all, the only oracle that exists is human intuition. All the rest of it is just bells and whistles, hammers and wrenches of the heart and mind.

Tarot cards, oracle cards, playing cards; you could do an intuitive reading with uno or old maid cards if you wanted to.

Tarot cards, rune stones, pendulums, black mirrors, crystal balls, palm lines, star patterns, head bumps, chicken guts, random songs on the radio or what-have-you; all of them are just tools. I call them oracle tools, and they are simply just that. All of these things and more are simply things that help us access and communicate our innate intuition. They are like microphones that amplify the quiet whispers of spirit and energy. For the deep and sometimes hidden well of human wisdom, your intuition is the pump that brings the wisdom to the surface and these oracle tools are the cup of water that primes the pump.

The best thing is that you don’t need a single tool to unlock your intuition. With a little time and mindful attention, intuition is right at your fingertips quick as a thought. Think of TV psychics who just say way they see (or hear or feel or know) with no tools, props or drama required. That isn’t to say that they are better psychics than those of us that use these oracle tools, they use a different microphone. We all have something good to say. Not everyone is a good direct speech communicator. Oracle tools give us a way to put the non-verbal intuitive message into useful verbal form.

We may not need oracle tools, but they do make the whole process easier and a bit more fun. In that sense they are oracle toys as much as oracle tools.

Back on my old ModernOracleTarot.com Tarotbytes blog, I started a post series called “The Oracle’s Toolkit” It didn’t get very far before the whole re-branding to TaoCraft Tarot process kicked in. Inspired by the conversation last night, I’m bring that back too. We’ll start with the original first for parts about pendulums and pens, then move on to other oracle tools like scrying objects, rune stones and more.

I won’t make any promises how long the posts will be or how often they will happen. I hope you’ll follow the blog so you can see them whenever they do happen.

Short Sip Tarot returns in the morning. See you at the next sip!

Just looked at the latest new case count and deaths for our county for January 9-15. Yikes! Guess that sticks a fork in in-person readings for a while. Party Tarot is closed until further notice.

Please stay tuned to reputable news sources for up to date information. Avoid whackadoodle conspiracies and make good choices to stay as healthy and well as you can.

Being healthy and alive are the best oracle tools of all.