Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
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Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
Tarot readers are good listeners.
We listen to our clients so we can focus on their energy and their message. (That’s why I always ask you to restate your name and question, topic, or request for each reading, even if you are a Sage Sips members and getting one of your free readings. Reading that is how I connect to your energy message.)
Then we listen to intuition / energy / spirit to tell you what we see/hear/feel
Listening to spirit can be a little fuzzy and a learned skill, but listening to clients is basic. It’s the foundation that the best readings are built on. Listening to YOU is when explicit, plain-language conversation is needed.
Tarot isn’t about reading minds (nothing does that, really. Stage mentalism can trick you into thinking that it does, “trick you into thinking _____” is the operative phrase there.)
So to make Sage Sips and the collective energy readings better I need the collective, YOU, to use the big-kid words and tell me what you want, like and need from these readings.
Just like we chat or email at the beginning of a private reading to make it the best it can be, polls and questions are a way to converse with the collective and make those readings the best they can be, too.
The comments are always open for your feedback, or contact me through the Ask Me Anything page. I’ll be posting some polls every now and then to make it even easier for you. Here is one:
Sometimes the questions will be focused on improving your blog & reading experience. Sometimes they will be just for funsies. I hope you’ll play along either way.
Thanks! See you at the next sip!
Want a private conversation (reading) instead of taking the collective poll? Order private readings HERE. Prices start at $5. No appointment needed for email/video readings.
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Like I’ve said in PeaceTarot and a bizillion other times, a daily one card meditation is the bread and butter and workhorse and utter delight of learning to read Tarot. And, I’ve found, of living Tarot too.
It’s one thing to learn a skill or philosophy or spiritual practice. It’s another to live with it every day and let it become part of your skin and bones and morning coffee.
The best way to build a relationship with anything like this is bit by bit, day by day. Kick the tires. Test drive it. Take it on a shake down cruise. Lean on it. If it holds you up in troubled times, it will help shine a light on the good times too.
It’s not a religion, it’s nothing special.
In Chinese style martial arts its call gong fu…diligence and practice and work over time resulting in masterful skill. Tarot is the same. Anyone can read them. We all have innate, natural intuition and psychic ability. But it takes diligence and practice and work over time for it to become deeply useful – to become a part of your life and spiritual practice.
Pentacles speak to just that kind of work. Pentacles are aligned with the Earth element and are about exactly this kind of real-world, rubber-meets-the-road work. That is the suit’s window on it’s common meanings: work, career, wealth, and the physical realm.
When you add the images, words, music, sound that imaginatively come to mind, it nudges us toward the best key words to use for the card for the day at hand.
In this case I ‘hear’ the TING sound effect of something metal being hammered – like railroad spikes and railroad building sounds from old western movies.
It’s like movie Esperanto for hard physical work.
The hand holding a gold coin has a TA-DA! feel about it.
Put them together and work TA-DA! has results. In other words, the energy supports a productive day at hand. If it’s late in the day when you read this, no matter what kind of day it has been, do what you can to set up tomorrow to be productive.
And there the energy steps back.
Stop back tomorrow: Another one card like this tomorrow than on Thursday (hopefully, fingers crossed) we’ll do a Choose Your Card video.
Choose Your Card: Collective energy readings with a personal touch
PAUSE the video
Take a breath
Decide how you want to use the card – guidance for the day, the week ahead, anything on your mind
Choose Your Card
Restart the video to see the reveal and hear a little bit about your card.
Collective energy card not resonating with you? Private one card readings are free on demand for Sage Sip monthly members and available for order 24/7 no appointment needed HERE for non-members
Judgement: Use your good judgement, reason. Head over heart for this decision. You must rationally decide when & how to begin.
Death: Something has to changed or released in order to make your start or to get a fresh start. Is this new thing worth what you must give up to get it?
10 of Pentacles: Yup. This is solid, practical, a good omen. Go for it.
Sage Sips blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
This week’s choose your card video reading will post tomorrow or Wednesday
Members-only exclusive card reading is now available.
Hi everyone!
Merry Monday! The day job is day-jobbing and the squirrels are raving today. This is my 7th day of muggle-ing in the past 8 and I honestly don’t have the bandwidth to do a card of the week for you all today. I’d rather do a good job a day late than cram everything together this morning. Self care and self awareness is important in this line of work. Even if you are reading cards for yourself, it helps to be in the best frame of mind you can muster for the reading. Even if you aren’t particularly feeling it, a good night’s sleep, a healthy meal, a walk outside – anything like that – can go a long way toward a getting better Tarot message in the long run.
Instead of a “card for the week” today, we’ll try something else different and fun tomorrow or Wednesday because the new schedule is that there is no schedule. If there is anything in the world that benefits from going with the flow and following our instincts its Tarot and psychic work.
Meanwhile, there is a new one card reading up for members with this really cool techno-looking Ten of Pentacles from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck (used with permission, of course.)
Ugh…forgot to set the thumbnail AGAIN. Sorry about that. Guess your choices are that half-covered one on the right, the Flippy one in the middle, or the normal one on the left.
Am thinking about doing next week’s CYC with the non-RWS oracle-like Alleyman’s Tarot cards. What do you think? Or would you prefer the classic Pamela Smith artwork for a while? Lenormand? Comments are open if you have an opinion or any questions at all.
Ace of Swords: Head rules heart this week. Listen to your emotions but try not to let them cloud your thinking. Decisive action is needed.
High Priestess: It may feel like other people may know more than you, but they don’t know more about you. Don’t sell yourself short. You are the absolute expert about you. You know best what you need even when what you need is help or guidance.
Judgement: The boat never moves forward if people on the boat are all rowing in different directions. Use clear-headed judgement combined with courage to put the most harmful people off the boat and onshore all together. The boat moves forward very slowly if there is no one left to help you row. Use clear-headed judgement combined with wisdom to be be as generous as you safely can with second chances.
Science is the best way humans have to learn about the physical world and navigate the public sphere. In the physical world and civic life reason is our ultimate guide.
Yet, the subjective inner world lies outside of science’s grasp. Psychology comes close. There are reasons that there is much overlap between the work of Carl Jung, Taoism and Tarot. Science and spirituality are two sides of humanity’s coin so to speak. Tarot can help us understand and navigate the inner, spiritual world as much as reason must guide us through the outer one.
I’m no expert.
NASA says there are 2-3 eclipses a year. There are various degrees of solar coverage, and they happen in wildly different spots all over the globe. Total eclipses are just one of several types (partial, annular etc). To have a total eclipse land in your front yard is, indeed, a once in a lifetime gift.
And that is just the global perspective.
Open the perspective to the galaxy. Or the universe. How many planets have a moon that is just the right size at just the right distance in just the right orbit for a total eclipse to happen at all – ever? Somebody like Neil DeGrasse Tyson will have to answer that for us, but I’m guessing that it is mind blowingly, achingly rare. No one knows how many planets have intelligent life. How many places do both of those things converge. How many planets in the universe have eclipses like ours AND beings who can understand and appreciate them? Even if it’s not rare, it is a beautiful, powerful experience well worthy of every bit of hype and reverence it receives.
Yes, solar eclipses are just the shadow of the moon falling on parts of the earth. Period. Our internal subjective experience of this wonder of the Cosmos is where the magic resides with all the validity of science and shadows.
@SpiralSeaTarot on Threads, who shares my preference for smaller layouts, brought up the topic of a Solar Eclipse Tarot layout. I don’t know of any existing ones offhand, but it seems like an easy one to write.
I think the energy path reading that we do here all of the time could be adapted and amped up a little to meet the occasion.
Card 1: Waning Light
This card represents issues and energies that are fading away. This is something we are strongly advised to release once and for all. This is what must happen for our transformation, for life to progress to something better. The death card has turned up frequently lately in readings I’ve done and in social media posts by other well respected readers. Eclipses are traditionally associated with transformation and change. Change energy may be both ancient and a modern collective, but that doesn’t make it any less valid or powerful. Eclipses are a portal to change and this card hints at what must change for good and for all – or at least be put on the back burner for a good long while.
Card 2: Totality
The eclipse at totality looks like a portal to another dimension. This is a moment ripe for total communion with the spiritual experience of being a conscious human at this place and this time. Of every being in the entirety of the universe, you are here, now, witnessing this beautiful, unique thing. It can be, it must be, a moment of full presence.
In this layout, this card represents your spiritual guidance in this moment. This is what the universe most wants you to know. This can represent a moment of being your most powerful and profoundly authentic self. This represents your life path and life calling in this moment. This points to your portal, your connection to your highest and best.
Card 3: Emerging Light
This is hope and optimism and the other side of your powerful transformation. This is the thing to reach for, the thing to choose, the path most open to you. As the light of the sun returns, it spotlights the place to put your hopes and energies. It spotlights the path to take and direction to go. This card lights up the way and path forward.
Here is a solar eclipse reading for the collective, but I encourage you to get or do a reading for yourself. The profoundly spiritual is the profoundly individual.
Waning Light
Stop pushing. You don’t have to be in control. You don’t have to push and strive every moment. If you are content with the way things are, you’ve already won. If you aren’t happy, maybe you are courageously pursuing the wrong things. Hold up a moment. Is all of this frenetic action serving you, or some idealized purpose? Figure out what you really want. If you have it, great, call it a day. If not…charge in that new direction. If it is the right thing, you’ll get there without all the fuss and fury.
Totality
The essence of change is a new beginning.
The death card led us here. When you change what you do, what you think, how you live, how you show the world who you are, then the old thing, the old way, the old you essentially dies to this moment. BUT time – and you- continues. Moment slips into moment, and as the old slips away, the new emerges. Alan Watts famously said that “you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” This eclipse is the perfect opportunity and excuse to make a change and let the new you make a grand entrance. Physically, in the real world, do what you need to do to be safe. For your inner world – this is your permission from the universe to begin to fearlessly be who you really are and always wanted to be. Do it! Now is the time! Let yourself be yourself, no matter how carefully you let the world in to your new beginning.
The way to your highest and best is to stop waiting, and simply begin.
Things don’t have to be perfect immediately, but they can never progress if you don’t start to move. They say it is the journey that matters, not the destination. For there to be a journey at all, you must take your first step.
Emerging Light
The new you is magic.
The knight of swords is active power. It is yang power. Now is the time for yin power. Magnets can be powerful. This is the time to attract. Draw your power and best life to you like a lightning rod. But that requires that you do your part. Working magic means working, albeit working smarter not harder.
To catch lightning in a bottle you have to brave a lot of storms.
If you want to attract attention, you have to let your light shine where people can see it
Transformation requires change – releasing and beginning.
It is circles and cycles within circles and cycles – just like the literal eclipse.
Watch the eclipse in person if you are able. Watch online if you can. If you are night side or far away – know that eclipses exist. Reach out with your intuition and imagination and know that its energy of transformation and magic exists for you too.
After all, you are an Earthling with the privilege of living on a planet where a total solar eclipse occurs.
Spiritual growth is not an exercise in mass consumerism.
It isn’t a contest to see who is the most woke, the most pious, the most serene, the most wise, the most anything.
It isn’t a sprint. It isn’t even a marathon. It is about the quality of this present moment. It is about you being happy with you – right here, right now.
The most important lessons in our personal growth and evolution and maturity and autonomy are often learned the hard way. They are often hard-won over significant amounts of time. So it is important not to diminish those lessons by moving on too soon.
The two of pentacles is about balance, but it is the quicker, dynamic equilibrium of a unicycle rider. Temperance is the balance of a glacier, it is the balance of Stonehenge.
Temperance is more than just balance, it is about integration.
Balance can be juggling two different things. Temperance’s type of balance is about integrating those two (or more) things into a stable, foundational new thing. The two of pentacles is a balls in the air, juggling kind of balance. Temperance is a low center of gravity, “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” kind of balance. To borrow from Frank Herbert’s Dune, Temperance type of balance comes from Usul, the strength of the base of a pillar.
When a hungry person eats, they must then digest. The same is true of insights and epiphanies. The work of finding them is lost if we don’t integrate them.
We must change the big lessons and the big progress from a ball in the air that needs to be balanced into the integrated base of the pillar that imparts balance. This is why integration and transformation are integral parts of the Temperance card’s message of balance.
Live as your new self. Live your new truth. Make the new you an integral part of the old you. Then you can move forward again in certainty and – you guessed it – balance.
Next up: more “My Side of the Table” Tarot behind the scenes
Sage Sips is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee (or whatever you like to sip this time of day)
Seven of Pentacles: Wait. Give the seeds you planted time to grow. Don’t meddle…if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Just wait.
Seven of Swords: Mischief is afoot. Watch your stuff. Don’t fall for phishing. Be on the lookout for petty bs and swat it down if needed.
Nine of Pentacles: Enjoy what you’ve achieved. As one project wraps up, it’s good to take a minute to appreciate what you and your team have done before moving on to the next big thing.
Card doesn’t fit or feel right? Enter the card or any keyword in the search bar on the right side of the page (or scroll down on mobile) to browse the archives. Your message will find you – all you have to do is look and listen.
We are having a blissfully rainy day here in the ‘burgh. The energy this week has been kinda chaotic and funky. Weird even. The energy right now is the reset we need to shake off the funky mojo and get back to the normal squirrel rave of life.
If you are working this weekend – thank you. Stay chill, hang in there until your next time off. If you have this weekend off, stay chill, do what needs done and relax when you can.
I do weird things on the weekend like think about reverse engineering. Reverse engineering Tarot to be exact.
It is an interesting exercise at any skill level of Tarot reading to take an idea, anything, and try to find a Tarot card that best exemplifies that concept. Instead of going from a random card to its keywords, go from a random idea to its key card.
It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it takes a few cards to capture the essence of the idea, but I would guess that is why card layouts were invented. We’ll get back to talking about layouts another day. For today, I’ve been thinking about which one of the 78 cards best communicates the idea of authenticity.
Authenticity is a big, stage of life, personal growth, life-lesson kind of concept so my first instinct is to look toward the major arcana. Of those, my attention is drawn to the World card.
In my opinion, this card are best summed up by not just “the World” but by “Cosmos” and “Gestalt.” Together, it gives the feeling of the biggest of big pictures and everything in it.
Everything in the world includes the masks we wear AND the beauty behind them. Everything, the Gestalt, the cosmos includes truth, lies and everything in between. That includes the authentic self of each and every human being. Whoever you are, whoever you want to be, however you want to be perceived – every facet of your true self – is included, accepted and connected with the grand everything that The World card symbolizes.
Authenticity is a part of that everything.
Every part of you is a part of that everything.
That everything-ness of the World card in particular and of Tarot in general gets behind our social masks. It flows both ways. When you allow a reading to touch the real you and not all the “could” “should” and “will” you get a higher, more potent level of guidance and help.
Should you choose to work with a professional reader instead of taking the DIY approach, the reader’s level of authenticity also enhances the quality of your reading experience.
No two readers are alike. Some are con artists. Some are artist-artists. Some are voices from a higher realm. Some are practical, grounded, roots as deep as a tree. Some are therapists in artists clothing. Most of us are out here doing our thing just trying to make it through life ourselves and hopefully help some folks along the way.
You’ll know the difference when you see it. You’ll know when someone genuinely believes in what they are doing, or at least what they think they can do. The trick is finding someone whose authentic self vibes with your authentic self. Unfortunately there is no way for us readers to know when that is the case. It’s up to you to listen to your inside authentic self.
Thank you so much for reading today. Next up: You Choose interactive reading. See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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