Whatever your path, whatever you find holy, may the growing time of the sun light your way to health, happiness, peace, prosperity, wisdom and magic.
Tag: christmas
YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Merry Happy Everything
Happy Merry Everything!
If the worlds belief systems were Venn diagrams, there would be a lot of overlap this time of year. Light overcoming darkness, the triumph of human spirit over adversity, days literally becoming longer are core themes within every solstice season celebration. As I see it, that is where attention and energy and celebration are best focused – on the shared, universal, deep, primal underlying humanity of it all. Although you won’t see me turning down any mulled wine or Christmas cookies regardless of the reason they were made. It makes happy to know the fixins for some soft gingerbread cookies are waiting in the kitchen. And yes, the lights are lit on the tree even though it is broad daylight just because.
Not much by way of announcements. Email readings are open for the holidays. Order anytime 24/7. Am also working on some “Mindful Moments” bracelets to photograph and list in the shop
Before we get to this week’s cards, Happiest Holidays to everyone, everywhere. Wishing you health, safety and prosperity at the solstice and all the year.
Left: Page of Cups. One of my favorite cards 🙂 Traditionally, the fish in the cup is said to represent the mysteries of the deep soul and psyche. I like the playful happy quality the artwork takes on with the Witches Tarot, used here. Mark Evans’ artwork is far and away some of my favorite. The Pamela Smith artwork gives the card a sort of conversational quality. When you think about it, having conversation with a fish in a cup is a little bit absurd. Roll with it. See the humor. A spoonful of humor brings out the light in almost any situation. If you can’t see beyond the mystery or the misery of a situation, maybe find the humor in it if you can instead.
Center: King of Pentacles. Any day above ground is a good one, any little thing is a win. Have toilet paper? Win! Scraped together dinner? Win! Found a moment for a cup of coffee (or a beer, or whisky) Win! Things held together with bubble gum and baling twine are, nevertheless, together. Make the most of what you have on hand then lead your merry band of misfits (a bit of Robin Hood energy here) into a place of celebrating and enjoying whatever-it-is that you have. If you are the one who popped the top off of the can of spam, you still are founder of the feast and qualify to enjoy the moment as much as anyone. Whether other people follow your lead or not, whether there is another living soul around or not, make the most of what you have and enjoy the celebration. Make merry in your heart, just like that big old red clad ghost of Christmas present in that version of “A Christmas Carol” that always seems to be on TV this time of year. Cheers to you!
Right: The High Priest. This is one of the major arcana cards I tend to wrangle with a bit. And it is one of the other reasons I like this deck so much. The Marseille deck among others calls this the Pope, which makes sense given the Catholic church’s dominance in the countries where Tarot first evolved, Italy and France. Pamela Smith’s classic artwork for the card fuels that specific religious association and imagery despite using the more general term Hierophant (defined by Oxford Languages as “a person, especially a priest in ancient Greece, who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles.”) The name High Priest is, in my opinion, much more in keeping with the Hierophant name and the intent of the card. I’m going on about the hair splitting semantics because it makes a point about the cards energy for the week.
Vesak, Hannuka, Diwali have all happened recently. Today is the winter solstice and Yule. Secular and religious Christmas, Festivus, and the start of Kwanzaa are coming up this week. Sure, it’s never good to slavishly follow traditions if they have become detrimental. There is something laudible about making up your own, or bending old traditions to suit new beliefs and circumstances. By the same token, there is no reason to discard old established traditions if they are harmless, meaningful or a comfort. If there is any little tradition that makes you feel comforted or happy then yes, if at all possible, indulge. In the middle of chaos and crazy is precisely where repetition and tradition does the most good.
Whatever your Holiday, wherever and whenever you celebrate – or don’t – I wish you a safe and happy week. Merry Happy Everything!
Time Lording Is Hard
It’s way easier said than done.
It is true that we are time lords in a sense, creating meaning and holidays at will. People created holidays in the first place, so we have the power to change them at will and then change them right back if we choose to do so.
Easy enough.
The hard part is the emotions, the pain of separation, the homesickness. Nurturing, closeness, being with those we love is a deep, primal need. It’s no wonder that language ties separation to physical illness; homesick, heartache. We can celebrate any darn holiday on any darn day in any darn way we want. It is, however, really hard to feel celebratory when the people are out of place.
Which is why people traveling and gathering at Thanksgiving last week in spite of the warnings and covid dangers is a tragedy in the making.
I understand what might drive people to do it. Heartache, homesickness, loneliness and separation are powerful motivators. I get it. I feel it when certain songs trigger certain associations with past events…we’ve all been there one way or another. We would do anything for one more holiday, one more moment with a loved one.
Why would you put something so precious so at risk when a small shift in perception and a shifting a man-made habit now could preserve the future? Time lords see bigger pictures and far beyond instant gratification.
I understand the need to be with loved ones and the pain of being separated from them at holidays, but at the same time I would undergo any exile in order to keep them safe and healthy. The only thing that takes precedence over the consuming desire to be with them is the desire to protect and care for them.
It’s hard, but you can celebrate your chosen holidays any damn time you want, twice if you take a notion. Celebrate all the way from Thanksgiving to Groundhog Day if you want to. You can bring celebration to any day you want. You can’t bring back the dead. The worst may still happen, but wouldn’t you want to know you did all that you could to prevent it?
The world card is a great comfort in these kinds of times. It shows us the bigger picture in terms of space in addition to time. It gives us that wider perspective we need in times like this. All of the cosmos is connected. As long as your loved ones are in the World, we are together for the holidays. Keep them them safe, keep them here. Stay here with us. Be safe. Be well. Take a look at the big picture, and take your place in that wider world. Time and space can’t take the togetherness from you when the whole wold is one place in a connected cosmos.
The Niggles: Time Lords 2020
Emperor Tarot, magic spells and Time Lords
The idea of time niggles at me when it gets close to a new year. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Doctor Who. Consider this if you will: Time is arbitrary and a portion of time is as much under our control as it is for the fictional Gallifreyans.
Actually, not time itself, but rather the way we name and talk about time is arbitrary. This present moment is the one time under our control.
Right now for me it is a Friday night in November 2020. Cool. Gregorian is good. According to the Julian calendar, it’s something like two weeks ago. 2020 a crazy year? No problem – just call it 5780 as it is on the Hebrew calendar. Let’s hear it for 2563 B.E.!
“Time has no meanings except the ones we give.”
I honestly don’t remember if that is something I read, saw on a poster somewhere, or if is from one of the poems I chucked out in the final edit of Triquitera – but it captures the niggly idea about the arbitrary side of time. Take Thanksgiving, for example. It’s less the day than it is the things we DO. No doubt holidays are deeply tied to the time of year in their aesthetic and energy. I suspect it comes from a time when we celebrated the natural seasons rather than cultural or religious things. Thanksgiving is, essentially, a harvest festival. Regardless of season, couldn’t any gathering with family to enjoy a special meal be Thanksgiving? If you can’t celebrate on the exact day you usually celebrate, would it be any less meaningful if you did the exact same things with the exact same people a week later? Or months later?
Have you caught where this is going yet? Yes, I’m looking at you bare faced germ bags that value your individual fleeting entertainment over human life. Cultural events and social stuff change all the time. It won’t kill you to stay home, wear a mask and celebrate differently this year – but catching a potentially lethal contagious illness just might. Or kill someone you love. Or kill someone that someone else loves. If you put your “freedom to celebrate the holidays” over life and love, then you are a slave to present moment, not a master of it.
With the slightest effort we can all be Time Lords.
We are the ones to place meaning on time…we are powerful enough to observe and celebrate whatever thing at whatever time we choose, either individually or collectively. Thanksgiving or Christmas or what-have-you can happen any day or time that we say it happens. That’s exactly how it all started. Thanksgiving happens on the fourth Thursday in November in the U.S because the 1941 congress said so. Or it is celebrated the second Monday in October because Canada said so. Christmas is the 25th of December NOT because of anyone’s actual birthday, but because Emperor Constantine ordered it – probably as a tactic in archaic culture wars.
Holidays and traditions derive their meaning from the intense personal emotions and connections we place on them. If we give holidays their power, then we have the power to assign when and how they happen. If by necessity, the time and manner of celebrating a holiday has to change for the sake of human life, so be it. We have the power to change it. We have the raw power to imbue any time, any place and any activity with all the love, all the emotion, and all the meaning of a holiday. We have the power to help each other through the normal, natural feelings and disappointments that come in times of change and uncertainty. And we have the power to change it all right back again when the crisis is over. We can dominate time through compassion and adaptation. We can take time itself in our stride if only we have just the tiniest bit of the compassionate, protective strength that the Emperor card teaches.
Or, if you prefer, the lesson the Grinch teaches. Even if a green furry dude take all the stuff, the holiday still happens. Even if one year out of your life is different, the holiday still happens because your intention makes it so. Holidays happen inside of you, not out in the world in the best of times. If you give the day meaning, if you suffuse any time with emotion, meaning and commemoration, then that holiday – that time – is yours.
Elfcon – DONE!
The cure for holiday stress is to celebrate YOUR holiday, not other people’s.
Christmas cards – CHECK!
Gifts mailed to out of state family (which is everybody except the hubster and the padawan) – CHECK!
Cookies – batch one, devoured – CHECK!
More cookies coming? You betcha.
All that is left is a grocery store run for the big meal itself.
This has been the lowest key, biggest Zen, fewest fucks given Christmas ever. I probably forgot something really big and embarrassing. But then there is the part about fewest….well, you know.
Here we are over a year on, and I’m still niggled about the name change. I think the big niggles come from the big symbolism. Rebranding to the TaoCraft Tarot name is both a stage of life evolution and a giant step out of several self imposed closets. This year and this holiday season is filled with more authenticity than ever. TaoCraft is starting to feel lived-in and cozy.
It never fails to amaze me how there seems to be a Tarot card for everything…even the long slow process of sweeping Christmas out my psyche. It is one of the hardest things to let go, but still necessary to release. When it comes to tradition wrangling, the High Priest is just the thing. Or, from the opposite side of the same coin, rejecting the pope / hierophant is just the thing.
For a recovering fundamentalist, there can be a lot of mixed feelings and internal conflicts this time of year. Not only do you have to come to some sort of terms with family relationships (or the lack of them for those who ‘come out’ and are rejected) but you also have to come to terms with your feelings about the extant holiday itself. What do you do about pleasant childhood memories or a desire for all of the things about Christmas that are, after all, truly enjoyable? How do you celebrate the good stuff while letting go of the toxic stuff? In spite of the feelings at the time, looking back, all the things I cherish most about ‘Christmas’ has zero to do with the religious parts of the holiday. By letting go of christian christmas, I lose nothing.
My ethos has always been to make some pro forma gestures and try to keep the peace with religious family members. After all, evangelicals and fundamentalist respond well to sweeping things like that under the rug. With visions of the Ghost of Christmas Present dancing in my head, I’d remind myself that a simple little card was a small thing to do to reach out to my fellow humans, and honor whatever thread of relationship may persist. Still, it felt like *I* was putting a lot of time and effort and postage into *their* holiday. Right or wrong, that is a recipe for stress and resentment. We who have “left the faith” are thought to have left the holidays too. We have been so ‘othered’ that it takes a deliberate effort to find some sort of common ground with Christmas much less see a new path through the holiday season. It is hard to see a current spiritual or secular path through all the haze of Christmases past. It is conflicting to want to engage with the larger, more spiritual symbolism of the season but not the narrow christian-only aspects.
This year, for once, feels different. By scaling everything way back, enough evangelical energy is drained away that I can finally claim this as a holiday of my own. Call it Yule. Call it Solstice. Call it Festivus. Yes, there will still be a tree (no star on top) cookies, egg nog, gingerbread, lights, that plastic garland that I love despite it’s vintage cheesiness, and the whole holly jolly thing. But this year it’s MY holly jolly secular pagan thing. It a small and happy thing to mail gifts and write cards and bake and do when it all done in celebration of MY holiday instead of as a conciliatory gesture toward theirs. If it has some surface appearances in common with *their* holiday, so be it. But Christmas is not me. Not anymore.
When you were raised in the evangelical fundamentalist sub-culture, it is easy to forget that acting FOR something is vastly different than acting in compliance WITH something. You have every right to YOUR holiday traditions even if they are shiny new self-created ones. You have every right to celebrate nothing at all.
The moment we stop celebrating other people’s holidays all of the seasonal stress vanishes.
I give no energy to Christmas. Pumpkin soup to roasted chestnuts, Thanksgiving to New Year, I am celebrating Yule, Solstice, Festivus, all things cinnamon, cookies, egg nog and the light of the human spirit.
You may not be celebrating those things. Jesus may be the one and only reason for your season, which is just fine. But that is not why I send these wishes. From a place of holiday spirit, from a place of those things deeply meaningful to me….I wish you all a season of love, happiness, health, safety and prosperity.
Wishing you all the best throughout the holidays and the New Year
Speaking of the holidays…I’ll be available for email Tarot readings throughout the entire month of December. There may be some delays in delivery while I get the cookies out of the oven, watch Christmas Vacation for the third time or baste the ham, but be patient. I will get your reading to you. Email readings do not need an appointment, order HERE any time.
In-person and party tarot will be closed Dec 20, 2019 through Jan. 2, 2020.
But did I mention email Tarot is open? It’s my specialty, you know.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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