coffee – Page 13 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Summer’s K.I.S.S.

Happy Summer Solstice and the ten of wands.

KISS as in “keep it simple stupid.” I frequently have to remind myself of that timeless little piece of advice. This summer definitely has a “keep it simple” vibe so far.

Just like pulling weeds from a garden, things grow better when the weeds are out of the way. It’s a clarion call to clarity if you will. Open spaces and clean energy are a path to prosperity.

And apparently also alliteration.

When it’s brutally hot out, when it is summer solstice and maximum yang, that calls us to adapt and respond with maximum yin. Think watermelon at a summer picnic – a very yin food to nourish and comfort on a very yang day.

It feels like a season of relentless simplification and lightening our load. I’m thinking Ten of Wands energy: Put down the unnecessary and get out of your own way.

I’ve been given the advice to reintroduce myself and my work periodically. It’s a chance to welcome new followers and thank The old ones. The change of seasons seems to be the natural time to do that. Summer solstice is in two days, so this is as good of a time as any to say hello for the season.

This long post is everything all in one go. I know I’ve been harping on re-introductions, explanations and promotions a lot lately – but writing it all down has helped me to organize and, you know, simplify. Sometimes writing is as much a process of self-discovery as it is an act of self-expression. Thank you all for your patience with that process. There will be less promotion and more Tarot content moving forward I swear!

Here we go:

Meet Your Reader

I’m Sage and I’ve been reading cards since 1993, professionally since around 2003. I started with online work under my old internet handle “Baihu” on Keen, Advice Trader, and AllExperts. After that I worked independently with my old website modernoracletarot.com and its blog Tarotbytes. In 2018 there was transitional rebranding to TaoCraft Tarot. Since 2023 everything is under the name Sage Words Tarot on the website and socials. My current blogs are Sage Sips and Sage’s Other Words.

Free, Three, One

In addition to the free general audience Tarot readings on the blog and socials, I offer private distance readings in THREE layouts, THREE formats and THREE prices. No appointment is needed for distance readings.

I offer ONE live reading in ONE format at ONE price, by appointment only.

Distance Private Readings – Order HERE

Layouts

Sage’s Sip (one card meditation) for general advice, food for thought or a highly focused follow up to a recent larger reading with me – $5
Eclipse (three card pathway) shows fading energies, current message, and growing energies. Shows the path you are on – $15
TaoCraft (five card full layout) gives your energy path like the eclipse layout but adds pivot point (advice & choices) plus an alternate path cards – $30

Seasonal and Special Request

Available by special request or seasonal special offers.
Email format only
To request one of these when they are off season, please contact me
Modern Oracle – (seven cards) the same features as the TaoCraft layout plus additional “helping energies” and “potential challenges” cards – $40
Year Ahead (five cards) one theme card for each of the four seasons ahead and an advice card for the year as a whole – $25
Time Flow (four cards) designed to help us get organized: Let it rest, let it go, line it up, and let it flow.

Formats

Email: Pdf document sent to your email that includes a photo of your real world cards, a detailed explanation of the cards and a psychic summary with crystal energy and intuitive aromatherapy suggestions
Private share video: video reading files are too large to attach to an email. Pre-recorded video readings are privately shared with you through my YouTube channel and can only be accessed through the link that I will email ONLY to you.
InkMagick: pen and paper handwritten reading sent by USPS available to US residents only. Available in one and three card layouts. Members discounts are not available for InkMagick physical paper readings.

Live readings by phone

By appointment only
CONTACT ME by email to schedule
Schedules in advance – no same day appointments are available
Five Card format only – $30
Includes follow up email and photo of your real world layout

Membership

Sage Sips memberships are through my ko-fi page – join here
$5 per month
Members receive up to 3 FREE one card Sage’s Sip Tarot readings by email per calendar month, discounts on larger and seasonal layouts, random special offers, DM access and occasional exclusive content.
REMINDER: members please request your monthly free readings through ko-fi DM or by contacting me here (link above)

Ask Me Anything

Ask any question through the Ask Me Anything website page and get a FREE answer as a blog post (not a private response) Spam and inappropriate questions are deleted and blocked.

Party and in-person readings are currently closed.

All policies and disclaimers apply to all readings in all formats. You can read the details here, including appointment policies for the live readings.

In short, this is a customized, ephemeral folk art service. No refunds or exchanges are available. These readings are intended for personal enrichment, entertainment, general advice and as a spiritual practice. They do not predict the future. No medical, legal or third party questions please.

Accepted payment: PayPal via ko-fi checkout for distance readings. PayPal invoice for live readings.

Valid email required to participate.

There you have it. Welcome everyone. I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for reading!

See you at the next sip!

Sage Sips blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee (or whatever beverage you like this time of day)

Choose Your Card 10 June 2024

Private Readings by email / recorded video are OPEN, no appointment needed.

Three of Swords: The first step in healing a broken heart is acknowledging it exists. It’s ok not to be ok. You don’t have to be ok. You only need to be. Moment by moment, day by day it slowly gets better. Dharma Drum Mountain gives the best advice I’ve ever seen for dealing with heartache and problems.

Face it
Accept it (accept it is real, not that it is right – more on that later)
Deal with it
Let it go

Nine of Pentacles: It’s a good place. It’s a good day. It’s OK to be OK. You don’t have to be broken. You don’t have to be overjoyed. You might be (or be on the road to being) one of the lucky ones. At the same time, you don’t have to be anyone else’s savior either. You only need to be. The good things around you will take care of the rest.

The Wheel of Fortune: Up or down, we are all riding the same wheel. As the wheel of life turns, your direction up or down depends on which way you look. Shift your perspective and you are suddenly moving toward instead of away from and vice versa.

Even with your choice, this is still a collective energy reading. You get to choose which card was for you, but the card’s message was still drawn from the larger, Zeitgeist, collective energy today.

Choosing to participate at all led you to the three descriptions together. If one of the other interpretations matches you better – that’s OK too!! The process still brought you to a message that resonates with you. That’s what really matters. Keep eyes and ears open and your right message will find you, one way or another.

Want a truly personalized, private, just-for-you reading? Email and recorded video readings are open now – no appointment needed, prices from $5 to $30 total cost, no hidden fees or per minute rates.

Email readings have a picture of your individual real-world card layout. Videos show your cards being drawn. No matter whether I type it or say it – you get the same reading and the same message. It makes no difference to the process if I say it to a mic, type it on a keyboard to tell you live on a phone call. The words are the same regardless of how the words get to you.

Want to give it a try? Order HERE

A Fresh Start is Just That Easy

Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee

Click HERE to order email or private share video Tarot readings. No appointment needed.

Most of these distance readings usually arrive in your inbox within 24 hours.

Sometimes there are delays if you order nights, weekends or holidays (USA eastern time) You’ll hear from me within 24 hours with an update, regardless of delivery time for the full write-up.

Live phone and online readings are by appointment only and schedule at least a week in advance.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Or download the FREE Tarot Portfolio booklet for all the behind the scenes details about my distance Tarot.

Conversation with the Collective (#kofipollchallenge)

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:

Poll: What is your favorite kind of post so far?

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.

Card of the Day: Ace of Pentacles, 21 May 24

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.

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!

Learn to read Tarot and bring a moment of peace to troubled times. Peace Tarot is available now for instant download in the ko-fi shop.

CYC: The Fool

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.

Technical Pentacles

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.)

See you all at the next sip!

Want to be a member? Join here!

Sage Sips Membership ($5 monthly) includes

Free private Sage Sip one-card Tarot readings by email at your request up to 3 per calendar month (non-member price $5)
Discounts on larger layouts
DM access on ko-fi (ask me anything!)
Occasional exclusive content & collective energy Tarot card readings

Zombie Cat Membership ($6 monthly) includes

Free private Zombie Cat three-card yes/no Tarot reading by email one per calendar month at your request (non-member price $15)
Discounts on larger layouts
DM access on ko-fi (Ask Me Anything!)
Occasional exclusive content & collective energy Tarot card readings

All private readings require that you ask for them each time for a few reasons:

Seeing your name, topic, question or permission for an open reading in the email is how I connect to your unique energy message
It confirms you consent every time, which is a way to respect you and your energy message
It gives a firm email connection to make sure your reading document arrives with as few glitches as possible.

Choose Your Card Tarot: week of 15 April 2024

Sage Sips blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

Want an affordable private Tarot reading? Click HERE and scroll the list. Prices and layouts for every question and budget.

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.

Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot, used with permission

Solar Eclipse Tarot Reading

Science!

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.

See you at the next sip.

Gentle Integration

Private readings are open, no appointment needed!

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

See you at the next sip!