Seven Dane Asmund, creator of The Normal Tarot (used here with their permission) reads Summer Knight 1 as “beginners luck.”
I’m also getting a little bit of a Page of Wands vibe here.
This weekend, it might not be as much luck as destiny.
You made it! It doesn’t have to be pretty or stylish or winning by a large margin to count as hard-won experience that your later, not-beginner self can call on. Maybe squeeking through with “beginner’s luck” is a little boost, a little nudge in the direction you are meant to go.
Begin where you are.
Bloom where you are planted now.
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee (or whatever you like to sip this time of day). Like what you read here? Please support me on ko-fi to help keep the blog and Substack free without ads or paywalls
The ‘Waning Moon’ card is about gradual change. Today’s message lives in the Venn Diagram overlap between intuition and real world science. That is often the case with moon related Tarot and Oracle cards. Obviously – the cards reflect thoughts and emotions inspired by the literal, physical, objective real-world moon. No wonder the moon is a favorite of the science minded and the spiritual minded alike. No wonder the Artimis 2 mission captured America’s heart in spite of the political catastrophe that we’ve become.
Copy – moon joy.
In his Animal Wise Tarot deck, Ted Andrews strongly ties the Moon card to natural cycles. The physical natural world has much to teach us, but so does the metaphysical and the spiritual. It is as natural as the rest. As a lovely point of sychronicity, the moon tonight as I write this is a waning crescent which seems to emphasize the notion of fading.
In my mind’s eye see ombre hair color, again bringing fading to the forefront.
But gradual change is still change.
Think Isaac Newton.
Newton’s first law of motion is the one that tells us objects at rest and objects in motion tend to stay that way. The bigger the thing is the more it takes to move it, turn it or stop it.
The racism, fascism and Christian nationalist bigotry in the US is one hell of big thing. It’s going to take every bit of all of us to stop or change it.
Inertia is a thing. It is woven into the fabric of the universe. We shouldn’t be surprised, perhaps, if the right-wing extinction burst is the slowest in a bazillion year history. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening just because it is happening slowly. The earth turns in 24 hours. The moon circles us in a month. Jupiter turns in around 9 hours. Neptune takes 165 Earth years to circle the sun.
Neil DeGrass Tyson famously said that the “universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.” Neither is it under any obligation to meet any single one of our hopes and expectations. Things happen in their own time. They may change slowly, but they inevitably change. That is another law of the universe in both philosophy and the physical law of entropy.
The waning last quarter half-moon faded to tonight’s crescent and will continue to fade to the dark night of the new moon. Then it will fade brighter again.
The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice unless the full weight of multitudes and generations drag it there slowly. Hate and bigotry can fade, but only when we gradually, relentlessly do all we can to erase it.
Dilute it relentlessly with kindness, even this must and will fade.
Deck: The Normal Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, all rights reserved, used with permissions Publishing Goblin LLC
My first thought today was to do the usual Action Eases Anxiety layout with the usual Lenormand or RWS tarot decks.
But instinct, or intuition, or spirit or the muses – or whatever you want to call it – had another idea.
First, I felt pushed toward the Normal Tarot deck (by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission) Then the layout seemed all wrong. Anxiety is often connected to outside conditions like *gestures wildly* everything in America right now.
At that point I hear “look within”
How very Bene Gesserit.
Look for and listen to your own deep intuition. It speaks quietly, and needs your full attention and maybe some amplification. Any microphone of your choice will do. For me it’s cards. It might be astrology, or a random song on a randomly chosen playlist. It might be that one wise snippet posted by someone in the middle of your nightly doomscroll. Whatever your amplifier of choice, look inside and listen to the spirit and intuition that is in there. Take yourself seriously.
Looking at the deck’s guide, the Drowned King is about tragedy at the hands of hubris. It is biting off more than you can chew, and then choking on it.
I am also reminded of the taijitu. The opposite colored dot in the middle of the widest portion of each color speaks to how anything in the extreme holds the seed of its opposite.
The advice is really about moderation. This is a week for taking the middle way.
Yell too loud and yes, you are heard, but you also let your enemies know where you are. Learn too far forward and you fall down. We’ve been called to action a lot recently by the Knight of Swords, but there are limits. Know yours.
When you’ve been pushing the “edge of the envelope,” you have to know when to “haul it back in” as the movie The Right Stuff put it.
Look inside and listen. You’ll know when to move, and when to stay put. You’ll know when to strive, and when to take smaller and chew so you don’t wind up like the Drowned king.
This card and the inverted star together let us know that we are where we need to be right now. Sit tight. Bloom where you are planted. Be present with here, now. Too much pushing or striving could lead to disaster.
Taking slow sips this week – see you at the next one
I don’t often share my own Tarot card draws. It defeats the purpose of looking at the collective energy. Looking at the collective energy benefits us all because the collective energy touches us all in one way or another. Everything is connected, one way or another.
But this week I’ll share the guidance I was given for the week ahead, because I think it is worth sharing. It may not be a reading OF the collective energy, but it is a good way to deal WITH the collective energy this week.
Be still.
Keep quiet. Agitated water stays muddy. Be still to let things settle, to let things become clear as they naturally will. Gravity still works. Things will settle eventually.
Protect your peace.
It is a treasure worth protecting, and protecting it is wisdom worth sharing.
I have no idea if cross posting between blogs is a good idea or not. Nor do I give a fk at this point. That’s the whole idea of being an amateur hobbiest instead of trying to be a professional side hustle. Here goes nothin’
Clearly, this blog is going to be inspired by current events and take the place of the void screaming in my old blog Baihu’s News Haikus.
Lately I’ve been following Dan Harris. His approach to meditation very much resonates with my own (“Inner Peace Mthrfkrs!”) His posts about action easing anxiety came just when I needed to hear it in my personal life and it inspired the Tarot layout by that name. It’s true. I’ve lived it. I’ve used it. And I’ll be posting a reading later today on Sage Sips – if I get the laundry done, supper cooked and the garbage out in time. Funny how these full time jobs tend to take up so much time.
Woke up this morning to more insanity between U.S. and Iran. To those Gen X among us, did you ever in your 1079 remembering life imagine that Iran would wind up sounding almost reasonable in comparison to the White House? Am feeling the Lenormand deck. I think we can use one of it’s pull-no-punches kind of readings.
I’ve recently added a third card to the layout. The first is ‘what it is’ to show the current energy environment. The second is ‘what to do’ suggesting a helpful response to that energy, probably a shift in perception or understanding. The third is ‘how to do it’ which I hope will both support the second card and encourage us to implement it out in the real world. I think of swords cards as sort of the patron saint of this layout….air, intellect AND action.
Making an action plan can go a long, long way toward easing anxiety. But putting the plan into actual action goes that one step further. Even if the action plan goes entirely off the rails as plans so often do.
I’m such a tiny little speck of nothing when it comes to current event and US politics. All I have to offer in this situation at the moment is an internet connection and three congressmen to yell at. Online contact may not do anything, except as one tiny electron tick to some aggregate statistic. But at least I can go sleep tonight knowing I did what I could.
I encourage to send your tiny electron to your representatives, contribute whatever else you can, and above all vote. Check your registration, jump through as many of their obstructive hoops as you can and if you can’t, see if anyone can help.
In the words of TV’s firefly “When you can’t run, you crawl and when you can’t do that you find someone to carry you.” That. Only voting.
Make the midterms look like the Avengers assembling.
People were joking online about being willing to crawl over covid covered broken glass to vote against the fascists in the past couple of elections. (Hopefully it won’t come to that, but don’t give them any ideas) But the idea. Do whatever you can. It doesn’t only help the greater good, it helps you. Action eases anxiety.
Will talk to you later on the main blog. Hang in there. Wishing you some little thing that gives you a ridiculously large amount of happiness in spite of it all. Imma have a second cup of coffee.
Today we are using the Normal Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund in the Action Eases Anxiety layout.
What it is: The Fifth of Winter (peak of the test)
What to do: The Masterless Knight (wild card)
How to do it: The Courteous King (tragedy and compassion)
I am reminded of the old adage that “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is taking action in spite of it.”
This old meaning of courage is important in these new times.
These cards hint that things are just as bad as they seem. Denial serves no good purpose. The old ways are gone, beyond repair.
The only way forward is to create something new, something courageous and something profoundly compassionate. Here I ‘hear’ the song “Miss Couragous” by the 1990s band The Nixon Clocks.
Old institutions can no longer guide us. I ‘hear’ “religion must fall.” Given my personal background, this feels particularly directed at American evangelicals. May they become social pariahs.
Find your own unique way. You are the king of your own inner kingdom but with no control or dominion over other people. Rule your inner world with wisdom and compassion. Compassion directed toward yourself and toward others.
Support Sage Sips on ko-fi to help me keep the blog ad-free
I like to think it’s a writer’s thing.
I call it the niggles when a thought captures your creative imagination and keeps poking at you until you write it. The Ten of Swords has been a little like that the past couple of days.
I originally wrote Action Eases Anxiety as a 2 card layout showing, essentially, what it is and what to do. The cards describe current energies and give a suggestion about how to best navigate them. My thought was to add a third card …. a how-to-do-it card, which would flesh out the sentence, and let the layout echo parts of speech: subject-verb-object in a vague sort of way.
The new, third card was the 10 of swords and it prompted an avalanche of random sayings and platitudes plus a bonus earworm of a song from one of my favorite albums back in the day. It all pointed toward the 10 of swords keyword surrender. Often this surrender is the wave a white flag and admit defeat kind that the dire-looking Pamela Smith artwork would indicate.
In this case the surrender word has a different connotation. It is more like acceptance but not acquiescence. There is an element of going with the flow that we see in the six of swords, but with a much more disturbing undercurrent and context than the six would carry. This card connects to the previous reading in a way the six could not.
Surrender is a way to persist.
Someone on Twitter several years ago captured the absolute essence of this card as it presents today. I can’t remember who it was, but I want to say it was author Chuck Wendig in his You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton era. Whoever it was, they described the Ten of Swords something like “yeah, you are laying on the floor in utter defeat, but while you are down there you look under the sofa and find the car keys you lost two weeks ago.”
Today, the so-called negative aspects of the card are only negative or bad from a hyper active, frenetic, pushing, over-achieving point of view. Sure, it’s bad from an all-yang sort of perspective. If you look at it from a more yin-balanced perspective, surrender IS persisting.
Surrender lets you understand your situation and deal with it honestly and rationally (after all, intellect is a swords thing.)
A psychiatrist at a hospital where I worked a long time ago once said that “the decision not to decide is still a decision.”
So by that same token, waiting and watching IS doing something.
Yes, it’s true that if you wait for the perfect time to do something you’ll never do it because the time is never perfect, BUT timing can be better if not perfect. Waiting for perfect is the problem – being thoughtful and strategic is not (again a swords / air / intellect thing)
Surrender and retreat isn’t defeat, it is advancing in a new direction.
“He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”
Adaptation is survival, and that is the key to persisting in this energy.
The Action Eases Anxiety layout gives us a look at the current energy for today or the week. It shows what the energy is, then suggests a good way to deal with it. Whenever you have some small bit of understanding and an action plan, those ideas together can ease anxiety and worry a little bit. It’s no grand prediction about what will happen, but a solid suggestion how to move through this current energy with a little bit more peace of mind.
Like I’ve always said: Tarot isn’t about predicting what will happen in life – Tarot is for figuring out what to do when life happens.
What it is: New Moon (reversed) – fragile potential
What to do: Five of Winter – persist
There is much potential around you, but it can be easily thwarted. Don’t sell yourself short. Persist. Don’t bail out just when the worst is about to be over.
I ‘hear’ (meaning the intuitive interpretation comes as words or sounds instead of mental images) “It can’t rain all the time” from the 1994 movie version of The Crow.
I am also reminded or the adage to not change horses mid stream.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
It’s also said that it’s darkest before the dawn. Don’t give up just before the sun peeks over the horizon.
Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.
And all the platitudes and proverbs like that.
In other words, yes it’s hard. Yes it’s a mess. Hope is over the crest of the next wave. Don’t wimp out at the last minute. Dig deep you’ll make it over the crest of the biggest wave sooner or later.
shown: The Normal Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission. Learn more at publishinggoblin.com
Over the past several months I have been given images and messages about letting go, moving on, releasing what no longer serves.
That especially included romance Tarot questions which always makes people hurt and angry, understandable so. Heartbreak and loneliness are some of life’s sufferings that no one wants to experience.
Still, there is a tiny glint of encouragement, a little bit of shimmer among the ashes.
Astrology isn’t my strong suit, but according to internet memes, things are turning a corner, at least on individual levels. I’m not touching world events here. If I can give a little encouragement on an individual by individual basis, that’s plenty enough of a win. Encouraged individuals are then a little bit more resilient and able to speak and resist and do whatever else we can in the flaming, toxic social / political environment that has been dropped in our collective lap through no fault of our own.
public social media, creator unknown
I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything, but my sun, moon, and rising signs are all on this particular list. They are on to something with this meme. I was really feeling it when I wrote the Standing in the Ashes post a few days ago and can personally relate to that post.
Since I have a full time day job now and have had to remake my professional Tarot practice into something entirely different, I am basically standing in the ashes of 20+ years of work. If you resonated with that post – me too.
This corner-turning energy that has cropped up this week in spite of world events really does beg the question of NOW WHAT. Now that we’ve done the hard things, now that we are standing in the ashes of the bridges we’ve burned, what are we going to do?
Here is where the encouragement part comes in.
Reading Tarot isn’t just about the cards. To be really good at it, you also have to draw in present-moment intuition that relates to the person, situation and energy of the moment at hand when you are doing a reading.
Last week was one of those weeks where I wrote for the blog in bits, little times fit in between other necessary things. It was interesting to see the energy shift even as I was working on a post about a single card here and there over the course of the week.
The day after the post published two days ago, the mental image the card prompted came back to mind, but with a subtle but important change.
The figure on the card was facing a different direction. Not back the way he came, but at a different angle than is on the card. There was less water, no cups (symbolizing less emotional upset, more clarity, and a greater sense of calm)
Most of all, the ground was all grey, like the ashes in the post BUT with a silver and gold shimmer. It reminded me of the simulated moon dust from an old episode of Mythbusters but with the tiny glitter they add to nail polish mixed in.
Yeah, everything has been burned to ash, but that ash is shimmering with potential. The shimmer is new, compared to the same mental image from writing the other post a few days ago
The Standing In The Ashes post put the onus of rebuilding on us. Then the energy was reminding us that our intention matters. Causes have effects and we are the cause of our next experiences. It’s a little bit of a dark and burdensome message, but there is no light without the shadow. Or as Carl Jung wrote “…the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
Yes it is our responsibility to choose what we do next as we stand among the ashes of the past. Yesterday is gone…so what shall we do today to make tomorrow better?
The shimmer reminds us that among the loss, among the ashes is great potential. The ashes remind us that the same old Phoenix is there is we choose to let them rise. But the shimmer reminds us that change is forever present. Change is life. We can choose the Phoenix that rises this time.
image public domain via Wikipedia commons @lychee532
Over the past several months I have been given images and messages about letting go, moving on, and releasing what no longer serves.
That especially included the Valentines Day and romance Tarot questions – which always makes people hurt and angry, understandable so. Heartbreak and loneliness are some of life’s suffering that no one wants to experience.
Still, there is a tiny glint of encouragement, a little bit of shimmer among the ashes…
Membership on ko-fi gives you on-demand private email tarot readings, exclusive content, DM access. Three membership tiers and multiple layouts can fit any question or budget.
Non members can get private email readings as a thank you for one time support using the “readings” menu on the ko-fi page.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
You must be logged in to post a comment.