Rainy Saturday

I love, love, love a rainy Saturday. I’m going to knit and drink coffee (unless someone orders a private email reading. Those are open this weekend too.)

Which is which basically today’s Tarot advice. Big dramatic spiritual learning doesn’t have to happen every single solitary day. It’s OK to follow your mood, especially in esoteric, energy or spirituality related things.

Outside of prescription medication and basic bodily functions, I can’t think of much that IS mandatory every single day … unless you want it to be.

That includes Tarot.

Reading cards for the same question over and over is a bad move for a host reasons. Reading at all needs a break every now and then.

Stop questing and searching for a few hours. Give it a rest.

USE what you already know. Integrate your spirituality as it stands now and make it a part of who you are today.

You can quest more later, when you feel the need. It isn’t something to force yourself to do.

The Tao Te Ching is often translated as the WAY of virtue. Ways are paths, ways are methods.

It is about making friends with yourself and your surroundings as things are right now even as you move forward. That includes days when you work hard to improve yourself, and days when you enjoy your favorite hobbies or pay attention to your sleeve increases.

The Mandalorians are right…this is the way.

Enjoy your weekend!

The author’s knitting in progress

Comfort

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Alleyman Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission

What are you waiting for?

Energy path Tarot reading for the week of 15 May 2023

Hello and welcome to Sage Sips. I’m glad you are here and right off thank you for hanging in with this through all the changes in 2023. With the demise of WordPress to Spotify integration and PodCastle not being as free as they made themselves out to be, the podcast is once again on hiatus, possibly permanently.

As we go along, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask. Blog comments are open, or you can use the “ask me anything” page on sage words tarot dot com. Substack chats and ko-fi DMs are open to subscribers.

This week we are working entirely from the minor arcana. Sometimes all minor arcana can hint at a low key or low energy week but it doesn’t mean it is an inactive or stagnant week. There is a sense of rootedness in the physical realm thanks to the king of pentacles card. When pentacles are around, there is always a sense of practicality. This is the suit of the physical realm and the classic element of earth and all of the no-nonsense no-drama style that you would expect. The other two cards are both from the suit of swords. Swords is connected to the element of air, but there is nothing airy-fairy about them. Swords also symbolize mind and intellect and action. Put all of that together and this week definitely calls for a head over heart approach. Cool incisive logic is your friend. Compared to the high flying ideals of recent weeks this might seem low energy by comparison, but careful precise action is action just the same. This isn’t the withdrawn or introverted energy we’ve seen recently either. This is deliberate, inexorable forward movement.

The mental image is a glacier flattening the landscape or the slow crumbling ah-ah lava that is just as powerful as the fast flowing type. The energy for this week may be slow, but it is oh so focused on being efficient, effective and enduring. The energy this week seems to be putting the level in level-headed.

Kings are leaders, so if the pentacle card represents concrete wealth, money or career, then the two together hints at a wise use of resources. Don’t let things waste either by sitting and mouldering or by being used frivolously or unwisely. Don’t allow things to sit and spoil, but don’t be a spendthrift either. This is in the fading energy position. Going back to the glacier mental image, I see small rivulets of melted ice, small streams of water flowing quickly down the front of the glacier. That feels like a quicker movement, an influx of resources may come, but not quite yet. It’s not a forever thing, but right now is a time to play the cards you are dealt and work with what you have on hand.

I get the sense of a short time or a not-serious wait. Here I get the mental image of that TV show where chefs compete to make the best dish from the ingredients given to them in a basket.

The current energy card is the knight of swords in reverse. I’ll spare you yet another explanation about how I handle reversed cards. If you have questions about reversals, what that means or how to handle them in a reading – please, ask away in the comments, ask me anything page, or other contacts as listed.

The knight of swords is usually a card of daring, or action and supreme self-confidence. Today the reversal feels significant, it feels like all of those things are blocked or hampered. It feels less like the afraid side of timid and more like a lack of confidence, or negative self-talk. This card isn’t talking to the part of you that is afraid…fear is there for a good reason sometimes. This is talking to the part of you that says “I can’t.” You can. You can do something. Who says you have to do what is expected? Who says you have to do what other people do? Instead of saying “I can’t” figure out what IS within your reach and your resources and do that. Every little bit helps and something is better than nothing in this case.

The growing energy is the eight of swords. Sometimes in a reading a card can serve as a highlight, an underline or an exclamation point to another card’s message. I think that is the case here. The energy of practicality, and level-headed, mind over emotion, deliberate, considered action may with us for a while. The eight of swords is working with the reversed knight to remind us that working within our means and doing what we can do is better than stopping dead in your tracks and giving up, doing nothing.

Take inventory. Make a no-nonsense plan. Act within your means and resources but act. Don’t let “I can’t” take you prisoner. Just because you can’t do one thing doesn’t mean the other things you CAN do aren’t needed or valuable. When it comes to doing the things within your means, what are you waiting for?

Thank you so much for reading and listening.

This free Tarot content is fueled by real coffee, the virtual coffees on ko-fi, paid subscriptions and your private Tarot reading purchases. That allows me to put your message first, not an advertiser’s. Please buy me a coffee or become a “Sage Sips” member with a Ko-fi or Substack subscription today.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

At Face Value

Sage Sips: a Tarot look at the week ahead in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

Hello and welcome to Sage Sips the blog, the newsletter and, so it seems, the podcast.

I think we finally and for real have everything set up under th new name. Sage words tarot is the main website with links to all the good stuff including private readings you can order anytime, no appointment needed.

Sage Sips is the name of the active podcast. The old feed under the title “Sage’s Short Sip Tarot” has been deleted or soon will be. Sage Sips is the name of this blog on ko-fi and substack where you can also get these Pathway readings for the week ahead on Mondays, but also subscriber exclusive content at other times.

Simple! And hopefully easier to spell and remember than the name Tao Craft was. So now that all of that is apparently nailed down for the moment, let’s look at the cards and energies ahead for this week. When I say energies ahead I don’t mean what is going to happen.

Nope.

That is 100% up to you and your individual circumstances. These pathway readings are all about the energy conditions that you have to work with, the vibe ahead can help you to make better decisions and take the best actions for you as an individual. It’s like how the general weather report for everybody helps you to decide what to wear out of your individual wardrobe.

You can decide to bring an umbrella if pouring rain is on the horizon, that sort of metaphoric thing.

This week has big energy, but it is big yin energy. There are two major arcana cards, death and the high priestess. Both cards are inverted, and that feels very significant this time.

If you’ve listened or read for any amount of time, you know that I use pure intuition when it comes to reversed cards, that is to say cards that appear upside down relative to the person doing the reading.

Every card has every shade of meaning: black or white, positive or negative, encouraging or discouraging and every shade of grey in between. I tend to reach for all the shades of feeling for every card anyway, so a physical reversal may or may not be meaningful. It might hint that the part of life represented by the card’s position in the layout is blocked, or hindered or difficult somehow. Just as likely, it could be a hint at a particular set of meanings or key words for the card rather than the layout position. Or, just as likely as either of those, it could mean nothing at all.

In this case it feels like a pull. It feels like advice so slow down, to pull back. I’ve never actually done this, but I imagine this is the mental and emotional equivalent of swimming in thick syrup. There is power here, but it is like the power a bowl holds…its usefulness is in the empty space as much as the bowl that defines it.

There is a sense of tension and expectancy, a period of necessary emptiness and quiet to give future progress somewhere to go. That’s why the two major arcana cards are standing on their heads.

The mental image here is two things:

First is the three of wands card. I don’t think that card is significant with regard to its meaning or key words. It’s more of the feeling that is evoked by the artwork on the card, usually of a figure gazing at the horizon. That lends a sense of waiting and expectancy and holding space for hopes like the bowl analogy earlier.

Second is a diagram that looks like a circle within a circle acting as a hinge or a joint. As quiet or empty as this time may seem, it is necessary in order for things to turn in a better direction. It feels almost like the stars are pivoting around this space in time.

The Eight of Cups is the fading energy. That suits the nature of the card so well, that it may not really begin to fade all that much until we are well into the week. It may stick around for a while, actually. The eight of cups is about endings, about walking away from something for your own good or for the good another. It hints at a bittersweet or melancholy separation that at the same time is utterly necessary. It’s about moving on toward something better even when letting go of the past isn’t a joy or delight. Bittersweet, yes, but very very necessary. This card hints at one of those times where you must acknowledge those melancholy or nostalgic feelings even as you definitively let go and move on.

The current energy is death in reverse. Death is the card of change. It is different from the change we see in the Wheel of Fortune card. This change isn’t cyclic. It isn’t about change within a larger or grander pattern. The change in the death card is more permanent, and much more transformational. There are reasons this is inverted death rather than the wheel card or the hanged man card. This isn’t a pattern of progress – wait – more progress. This is cocoon time. The caterpillar is dead and gone, but it isn’t quite time for the butterfly to emerge either. The cake is in the oven, the butterfly is in the cocoon. Profound change is happening, but it is happening slowly, quietly, and subtly.

The High Priestess is sitting in front of one black and one white pillar. There is a very Tao Te Ching feeling here. The Priestess is usually a symbol of cosmic mysteries with very yin, dark, hidden qualities.

Here is where the Taoism part comes in.

You can’t have darkness without light. The mysterious and obvious are opposites that define each other just like light and dark define each other and the solid parts and empty parts of a bowl define each other.

As for the growing energy card, the High Priestess in reverse reminds us that sometimes you can take things at face value or, as Sigmund Freud famously said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

As big and soul-shaking as the walking-away energies in the eight of cups and the death card may be, the advice here is to not read more into things than are already there. The recent past has been difficult and chaotic and changing enough without us heaping unfounded assumptions on top of everything else.

During this time of quiet transformation it is probably best to take the week at face value.

Thank you all for reading, and once the podcast is back up and running, for listening too.

All of my free Tarot content is readers and listener supported. No monetization means your Tarot message comes first with me, not an advertiser’s message. If you like what you see in these weekly readings, please consider a private reading, subscribing the exclusive content on ko-fi or substack or sending a tip to the virtual coffee mug.

Thanks again, see you at the next sip!

Advance – in an inward direction

Sage Sips is Tarot wisdom in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Subscribers can read more about today’s card on Ko-fi and Substack late evening 5/5

card: public domain, quote via brainyquote.com, photo by the author

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Writing It Down

Sage Sips: Tarot in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

One of my all time favorite media personalities, Adam Savage once said “Remember kids, the difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”

Part of my plotting with this rebranding and adding the Substack newsletter is to do the free three card path through the week reading on Mondays, then on Wednesdays, take a slightly deeper dive into the single “current energy” card. I’m thinking Fridays would be a good day to explore oracle cards or other divination tools like crystal casts, cold readings, channeling, pendulums, I Ching or whatever other intuition driven impulse comes along. Other posts, like Q&A or other longer reads will be entirely random. I count myself lucky to have things this organized. I enjoy having flexibility. Intuition or spirit or energy or whatever you want to call it – it doesn’t follow a schedule. Spirit guides and muses don’t give a flying rat’s patootie about social media or best marketing practices. I still don’t have ducks, I still don’t have rows, but this might make the squirrel rave playlist a little more fun for me.

And that, folks, is me following the eight of pentacles current energy advice.

All of the RWS Tarot cards have dozens of key words or phrases that have accumulated around them over the years – centuries, actually. Some are enduring and can be traced back to the writing of A.E. Waite and others, some are contemporary, either written into the guidebook for a specific deck or in a general Tarot book that can apply to any deck. The eight of pentacles (sometimes also called coins or disks) has been connected to skill, diligence, hard work, a project in progress, work, productivity, repetition, craftsmanship and more.

In addition to the long list of key words, each card can be read purely intuitively. The card and its keywords are simply a prompt or a springboard for the reader’s own human intuition or psychic skill. That opens up the reading to an infinity of meanings.

We can talk about intuitive vs key word Tarot readings later. For now lets focus on the eight of pentacles, since it seems to be resonating with one of the well-known meanings – diligence.

Or in this case it came to mind as the contemporary phrase “due diligence” which also brings to mind professionalism and discipline. Due diligence makes me think of doing what needs done to keep things right. It’s all about attention to detail, crossing of those Ts, finding out what needs to be known. It’s nose to the grindstone time. It is not a good time to phone it in and definitely not time for a f**k around and find out approach.

Do the science. Do the diligence. Write stuff down, metaphorically speaking at least.

Thanks for reading.

See you at the next sip!

*Waite Smith Tarot card image from the public domain

Matrix

Tarot reading for the week ahead

Before it was a movie, it was a word.

Hello and welcome to a whole bunch of stuff. I’m glad you are here. This is the first week of a new and hopefully stable web presence for Sage Words Tarot. Most Mondays you can find these three card Tarot readings for the week ahead in lots of places. So pour yourself a cup of whatever you like to sip this time of day and have a seat at the Tarot Table. The readings are the same no matter whether you came to the table by way of the Sage Words Tarot blog on wordpress and ko-fi, Sage Sips podcast, or Sage Sips on Substack. No matter how you got here, I’m happy you ARE here, so let’s take a look at these cards.

My hunch is to do this in the same format as I would for an email private reading. You KNOW I’m going to tell you that distance Tarot is my specialty and private readings are available to order 24 / 7 no appointment needed. Email Tarot has loads of advantages for both of us, and there is a web page and blog post about that coming soon, too.

That being said, this is my three card pathway layout. I based it on the old ubiquitous past, present, future layout but it doesn’t work with exact time or with predictions. This about the collective energy environment, sort of a psychic weather report that helps you to figure out your best way forward through whatever life throws at you. Like I’ve said for years now: Tarot doesn’t tell you what is going to happen in life. Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.

The layout is read from right to left, in the opposite direction of reading English. I do it that way for a couple of reasons. First, that’s just how I learned to do it a long, long time ago. It’s comfortable and it works. I think the part where we read cards in the opposite direction from reading words is important. Language and grammar is a logical process. When we flip the reading direction it disrupts that deeply ingrained logical thought pattern. That disruption helps to get past established mental habits and get to intuition a little bit easier.

The first card, the one on the right, symbolizes the energy that is fading. The middle card is the strongest energy around at the present moment. I’m writing this on a Monday morning – April 17, 2023 to be exact. Chances are, you are reading it at a different time. That’s where the customization comes in, even at a distance, even in a collective reading. In my experience, the inspiration we need is all around us. Whether you see it as psychic, spiritual, energetic or what have you, the message you need will find you one way or another and the moment you need it the most. Whenever you are reading this, the cards reflect your individual moment in time.

The left hand card is the energy that is growing in influence. Again, it is like an energy weather report of the vibe you might be dealing with later on. It is not a prediction of what is about to happen.

Another way to think of the layout is as the path we’ve already walked, the place where we stand now, and the path just ahead.

I tend not to use that metaphor because “path ahead” makes it too easy to fall into the trap of thinking in terms of predictions or some kind of archaic fortune telling. Tarot has evolved beyond that. If you are looking for someone to predict the future, I’m not the Tarot reader for you. I’m here for the personal growth, spiritual enrichment, inspiration and creative problem solving aspects of Tarot. I’m here to be a better person and better adapt to this squirrel rave we call life. Predictions can’t do regardless of whether they come true or not. But that’s another rant for another day.

My readings start with what I call the “general pattern.” That part isn’t as telling in these three card layouts as it is in a five or seven card layout. Here we see two minor arcana cards and one major. That is roughly the proportion of minor to major cards in the deck as a whole, so logically you would expect to see that same ratio in the layout. When that happens, I read it as “as expected” overall energy. No red lights, no sirens, no windfalls, no winning lottery tickets, just the normal, usual, average ups and downs of everyday living. In other words, chances are it is going to be a typical week, whatever is typical for you. The major arcana card is the growing energy position so the overall dynamics of the week will be building as time goes on as opposed to remaining steady or chilling out as we move toward the weekend. Things are on an upswing, which makes sense after the laid back energies of the past few weeks. It makes sense that the pendulum would finally start to swing in the other direction.

The fading energy is the Ten of Cups. Classically, the Ten of Cups is associated with all the happy family things you would expect based on the picture on the card. Cups cards are connected to the water element, emotions and our closest inner circle relationships. This isn’t to say that things are going to get unhappy or that you are going to lose the things that are dearest to you. In this case, it is the opposite. Words like “foundation” and “foundational” come to mind. Support systems, be it genetic family, found family or otherwise are very much there to support you.

I think this is the real cornerstone of this week’s reading.

The Ten of Cups reminds us that we have support. Know your foundation and your matrix. Before it was a movie or hair care line, matrix meant the environment something was in. Matrix is our milieu and the substrate of life. It’s glue. It’s the stuff that holds it all together.

Allow yourself to be supported. You are not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. There is a matrix and a life-glue out there for you. The trick is to find it and then to cherish it.

Current Energies are represented by the Eight of Pentacles. Pentacles are earth energy, career, wealth, and our relationship with the physical world. This is a cue that the conditions are right to be productive. Allow it to be easy. Just do it, as the shoe folks say. Stay busy. It has been said that work is good therapy. Focusing on a task can help you stay mindful and present in the current moment. That is exactly why simple, repetitive things like knitting, crafting, running, washing dishes or peeling potatoes can be meditative, even soothing, especially at times when emotions are running high. Again I hear “stay active” and “busy hands, quiet mind”

By the way, when I say “hear” it means that the intuitive information comes to mind in the form of words, sounds or songs. If I say “see” it means that the intuitive input is visual, coming through as mental images.

Finally we have the growing Hierophant energy. It took me a long time to come to terms with this card because of the religious imagery on older decks like the Marseille and the RWS card in the Youtube card draw video. That kind of imagery makes sense in the context of Tarot’s development in heavily Catholic Medieval Europe but it has little meaning for those of us who are not part of the Christian religious tradition. Depending on individual experiences, the religious aspects of the card’s appearance can be off-putting to say the least. It is thanks to Johanne Denelli’s writing and the Mark Evans artwork in the Witches Tarot deck version of the card that I’ve been able to work with the card at all. The Hierophant is the keeper of traditions. The hierophant tells old legends by firelight, and defines social expectation – even when social expectations evolve and change.

There are two threads of meaning for the card, and both apply in this reading.

First the Hierophant can symbolize tradition.

In this case it is calling us to set our new normal. Now it is our turn to say what is or isn’t traditional and if we choose to follow tradition at all or not. As someone on social media put it, we are the new ancestors.

After times of great change like the pandemic, people need some degree of sameness, some sense of a solid foundation. Whether it is based on old tradition, or the creation of a new one, after times of great change like the pandemic, we naturally gravitate toward things that are solid, and seem unlikely to change anytime soon. When you build a house, the foundation is the place to start. It might be a new building on a new foundation. It might be rebuilding on an old and proven foundation. Here again we are asked to find our matrix. What is our root, our cornerstone and our foundation? What is the glue that holds the whole thing together? What holds all of our parts in place? What is our matrix?

The other thread of meaning in this card has to do with social convention. It is about doing what is expected of us – or not. I relate this very much with that tension between expressing our true selves fully and authentically and the public face we put on in order to thrive, succeed, or at least survive in the society in which we live. Sometimes you have to take off your favorite goth band T-shirt and dress for a job interview. Sometimes you have to stake your claim for who you really are to heck with the cultural norms. Sometimes you can find a way to have both. Sometimes you have to stay closeted for your own safety. Sometimes you have to find new family and culture and walk your own path.

The message from the Hierophant is to know and define which path is best for you right now. Whether you are complying with the old or creating something new, do it knowingly, mindfully and deliberately.

In a private reading, I would finish up with a summary of any purely psychic intuitive impressions that come through. It may be related to the person’s cards or questions or it may not. That part is highly individual and very personal. It’s not really applicable to a general, collective reading like this. I do get the mental image of a lotus, if that means anything to anyone. That morphs into the image of a pine forest, along with the scent of pine. I’m guessing that’s our recommended candle or incense fragrance for the day.

And there the energies step back and here is where I would end things if I were reading for an individual.

For the whole group of you – thank you for reading and listening. Helpful links are in the text, in the right hand column, in the episode description. You know the drill.

Thank you again. Have a great week and I’ll see you at the next sip!

Are You Evil?

Question: Is Tarot evil?

Answer: It depends. Are YOU evil?

It has been said that a wise person is like a mirror, holding no opinion, teaching only by reflecting things as they are.

Tarot is like that.

Tarot is an amplifier for our own innate, natural intuition just like the shiny surface behind the light bulb makes a flashlight seem brighter. The eyes are said to be a mirror of the soul. Tarot is a mirror that lets us look ourselves right in the eye, right in the soul. That can be a terrifying thing. Or it can be the ultimate liberation allowing us to see and therefore become our most genuine self.

That is the power of Tarot.

Sure, the prediction thing is all fun and giggles and a great storytelling device for books, movies and TV but the real power in Tarot lies in its ability to hold up a mirror to who we are and give us a hint about how to help that person in the mirror be a little better and live a little happier.

Everyone is at least a little bit afraid of the unknown.

If you don’t know what to expect from a reading and all you know of Tarot is poltergeist movies and religious hysteria, something would be wrong if you DIDN’T worry about Tarot being evil. No one wants doors slamming, knives flying around the kitchen or red eyes growling in the night. No matter how good a mirror may be, it can’t reflect light that isn’t there. Setting clear, strong, positive intentions is the thing that turns on the light and puts some safety rails around the whole thing. Clear, positive intentions and shining your own inner light will spare you from gut twisting dread when cards like the Devil or the ten of swords show up.

The Devil and all of the other ominous looking cards are important, but they aren’t evil. They are part of the mirror. Dark, uncomfortable, frightening, terrible things are necessary in the deck to accurately reflect life on Earth which has dark, uncomfortable, frightening, terrible things in it.

Mirrors don’t come with background removal software.

Let’s be very clear: when dark or frightening cards turn up in a reading for you, it doesn’t mean that YOU are evil or doing something wrong. It doesn’t mean that someone you know has done something wrong or is out to get you. Tarot readings aren’t always that personal. Sometimes they reflect the human condition in which we all live. A mirror shows you looking into it but it also shows what is behind you and around you. Like the mirrors in a car show the traffic around you and help to reduce your blind spots, the cards show the energy around you. Knowing the energy environment can help you to adapt and thrive even in the middle of life’s biggest gnarliness.

Mirrors don’t come with special effect filters. They show you life as it is, not sprinkle pixie dust on it just to make you feel better. The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists and exactly what it realistically is. Good Tarot points out problems and suggests possible solutions.

The best Tarot does all of that with kindness.

Common courtesy and business transparency, with a generous helping of compassion while still telling hard truths are hallmarks of a genuine psychic or a skilled Tarot reader. If you are worried about Tarot being evil but still want to give it a try, it is all the more important that you find a trustworthy reader that makes you feel at ease without sugar coating everything.

I have some more thoughts about finding a psychic you can trust on the blog website. A link is in the episode description for podcast listeners. To help decrease the fear of the unknown by eliminating the unknown about my readings, the free ebook Tarot Portfolio is available for instant download in my ko-fi shop. There’s a link for that too.

Thanks so much for reading and listening. If you like Q & A posts like this, send some questions to be answered! You can use the AMA form on the website, use the blog comments, ko-fi DMs or the email contact listed on the website. If you like any of this Tarot content, virtual coffee and membership on ko-fi supports the creation of this free blog and podcast.

See you at the next sip!


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Portal to the New

Sometimes the best way to is through – don’t give up!sag

In his classic science fiction novel, Dune, Frank Herbert famously wrote

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast. I don’t have much to add to Frank Herbert’s famous quote because that essentially sums up the reading for this week.

That, and I also intuitively hear that “the best way around is through.”

The quiet, introspective, introverted, wait, watch, listen energy from last couple of weeks is still lingering for the collective zeitgeist if you are reading or listening to this close to the time when its posted. If you are coming across this at a later time, The Queen of Cups is validating any emotional fatigue or philosophical, thinking, introspective feelings you may have experienced recently. The 1909 Pamela Smith artwork we see in today’s card draw video shows the queen of cups near water, gazing into a cup. Sometimes that has intuition connections and you might resonate with the idea of fortune telling. The stories of Nostradamus gazing into a bowl of water to make his predictions come to mind. I don’t know if that was an inspiration for the artist or not. My sense is that the connection for this week is to the idea of water representing the depths of the human psyche and the queen is gazing to understand deep emotions and subconscious motives more than some superficial, shallow movie style prediction.

This energy is in the fading position, so the time is coming soon when we need to ease up on plumbing our psychological and emotional depths. Knock it off with the emo for a little bit. We need to go heads up and eyes open for a little bit.

There is a certain practicality to the Devil Card. This week it is asking us to take up the terrifying task of staring reality in the eye. There are things in this world we can’t control. There are terrible people making terrible decisions. Malicious intent exists. Putting it on the line to stand up for yourself and stand up for what is right is a fearful thing.

Which takes us back to the Litany Against Fear. Sometimes the only way around is through.

Here I am reminded of a scene from the pulp fiction based 1985 movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Granted, we aren’t talking about super brainy high class cinema here, but it is a fun movie. One of my favorite parts is where Chun, the martial arts master tells student Remo “Fear is just a feeling. You feel hot. You feel hungry. You feel angry. You feel afraid. Fear can never kill you.”

Which also reminds us of the very real life quote from President Franklin Roosevelt that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Whenever we confront external danger we are confronting our own fear as well.

Sometimes the demons we most need to slay are the internal ones.

Only then are we free to begin and begin and begin again if we need to do that. The Fool reminds us that we can begin again as many times as we need. Moment by moment if necessary. Sometimes the only way to that new moment is through the fear we feel in this one.

Thank you so much for reading and listening!

This free to access Tarot blog and podcast is supported by your purchases, memberships and virtual coffees on the Sage Words Tarot ko-fi page. Please visit the links below and in the podcast episode description. Any likes, follows or shares you can spare are greatly appreciated. Private readings are still open, with no appointment needed for email.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

If Einstein said it…

Sage’s Short Sip is a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

If Einstein said it…then it must be true, right? I don’t know if the attribution is correct, but if it is a feel validated. We’ve been getting this exact kind of message from the Two of Pentacles for ages.

That sort of dynamic equilibrium – be it molecules across a permeable membrane, a clown on a unicycle, or an Austrian physicist on a bicycle, movement is a part of balance just like change is part of life.

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