You wouldn’t necessarily expect a lady with a sword to be talking about a peaceful state of mind, but there it is.
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Today’s card is the Justice card from the major arcana.
At first blush this card has all of the usual admonishments to wisdom, fairness, balance and, well, justice. I was listening to news updates a few minutes ago, so of course all the current politics is top of mind as I saw the card.
But I am also reminded of a slightly older current event. Here in the United States, judges on the supreme court are called justices. The senate confirmation hearings for the newest justice, Kitanji Jackson, were publically broadcast and nerd that I am, I watched them. At least sort of. If I’m not listening to music, have a habit of letting the news play in the background during the day. Yes, it is a lot of repetition but enough bits and pieces make it through my foggy inattention to stitch together a picture of the day’s events. During the confirmation hearings, Justice Jackson said something about her early work as a defense lawyer that landed in my brain with a thud and has been there ever since. It was interesting on level because it was an epiphany out of context, an ah-ha moment apropos to nothing I was actually doing at the moment. It was interesting because it was an epiphany. I’d always suffered under the wrong understanding. She disabused the nation and history of that misunderstanding in a handful of sentences.
Defense lawyers.
Like many other people, I always had the vague impression they defended the criminal or the crime, in other words advocating for the wrong side.
Nope.
Defense lawyers defend the criminal’s civil liberties, not the crime. They protect the constitution and equal justice under law and the principle of innocent until proven guilty. THAT is what they were defending.
Of course in my brain, there is a cut scene right to Jim Carry’s character in the movie Liar, Liar where he screams legal advice over the phone to his most recalcitrant client and tells him to “STOP BREAKING THE LAW!”
It is an interesting, complex balance between protecting innocent society from criminal behavior and protecting equal justice from the very system that claims to have created that self-same equal justice.
All of which begs the question: what on earth does any of this have to do with a Tarot reading?
I have a hunch that this high-minded esoteric kind of thinking is why the Justice card has a reputation for presaging a fair and correct decision in any literal legal proceedings, especially in the prediction-oriented days of Tarot readings.
A number of readers comment on the similarities between images on the Justice card and on the High Priestess card. Justice is thought to be worldly while the High Priestess is of course purely spiritual. That last Sage & Stuff post about Venn diagrams might hold a clue for us today. With the similar visuals, what is the conceptual overlap between the cards?
Wisdom.
The High Priestess deals with mystery and esoterica while Justice is faced with nitty gritty action within the real world. Both act from a place of great wisdom, but move in different directions. One is wisdom drawn from ineffable mystery the other is wisdom applied to implacable reality and practicality.
As Baruch Spinoza reminds us, justice, wisdom and indeed peace all go hand in hand when he says “peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence and justice.”
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It doesn’t matter who YOU think the wisest man who ever existed is, the point is that their philosophy – whoever they were or whatever that philosophy is – it is derived from introspection. The introspection is the thing.
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Admittedly, my brain is getting in the way of intuition a little bit today. Or maybe this really is the energy message. I don’t know. I’ll let you and how much you resonate with the card decide that piece of it.
Often the four of cups has to do with someone who is sulking, or closed off. I see it often in relationship questions, which fits the suit of cup’s symbolism and connection to love, romance, and inner circle closest relationships of all types. It is often an energy of futility and unrequited emotion. It’s not good news in that context. Adages like “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,””throwing good money after bad” and “throwing pearls before swine” come to mind. Often this thread of meaning shows up in readings that are asking the “will I get back together with my ex-” variety of questions. You can’t control how other people feel and you can’t predict what they will feel or do, so the answer in that circomstance is sadly, no, the focus is internal. The message then becomes the advice of introspection….look within to do what you need to do to heal and hopefully progress to the move-on energy that the 8 of cups can offer.
But that, as they say, is another story.
Today, the card skips over all the closed-off energy and relationship advice. Today it cuts right to the chase and talks about introspection.
It resonates quite a bit with “Mr. Venn And His Nifty Diagrams” from yesterday on Sage & Stuff, my personal blog. That post was inspired by Hustle & Meditate the substack newsletter by meditation coach Jim Martin aka “The Unusual Buddha” plus an instagram post by I think it was Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch that spoke of mysticism and mystery teachings within witchcraft and magick.
In a nutshell, they both said the same thing although from different areas of expertise and separated by several months in time. The things they were saying were influenced by different cultures who came to similar conclusions a long time ago….despite being world apart in a B.C.E time where there was no trade or internet connecting northern Europe, India and China.
Both the Martin newsletter and the Auryn Instagram post conclude with the notion that, while we have much to learn from the masters who came before, we must each walk through the portal of learning for ourselves. We each have to walk our own path, carve our own way, experience the mysteries of the universe for ourselves and look at the moon with out own two eyes.
It is a bit of Isaac Newton meets Bruce Lee. Newton acknowledges that quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” end quote. Centuries later and inspired by a completely different culture, Bruce Lee admonishes his student in the movie Enter the Dragon quote “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” end quote.
Blind faith takes you nowhere. Accomplished masters can show you A way, but only you can walk it. Only you can see your true path through your own thoughts, contemplations and introspections.
Nineteenth century journalist, philosopher and father of Frankenstein author Mary Shelly, William Godwin once said that “The philosophy of the wisest man who ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.” Who you consider to be the wisest man person to have ever existed is up to you, but that too is derived from introspection – yours. Introspection is the thing, with this card and Godwin’s quote, but more than that, YOUR introspection is the key thing. The wisest person who ever existed may be a guide and a giant for you to stand upon, but it is still you that must do the standing, walking and moon gazing.
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Thanks again. See you Monday for the next short sip Tarot!
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the queen of cups. Queens represent a nurturing, caretaking sort of leadership. The suit of cups is associated with the element of water, with emotions and with our closest circle of relationship. Most of the time this card seems to point to deep inner knowing that requires a quieting of emotions to reach. The queen’s gaze into the cup is said to symbolize plumbing the depths of human emotion and our subconscious psyche for important guidance and answers to life’s dilemmas.
But like every card, the queen of cups has strings of keywords and connotations that have been attached to it over time. Psychic ability is one of those common associations, but that is the opposite side of the world from today’s energy.
Today is more about calm and clarity and a sense of emotional harmony. Today is focused on the prerequisites for intuition, not psychic ability itself.
“Emotional healing” is another of those accumulated key concepts for the card. I see a problem with the whole notion of “emotional healing.” The word healing implies that healing is needed. It implies that emotions can be somehow broken or diseased, literally ill-at-ease.
But, on the other hand, just because an emotion is difficult doesn’t make it dysfunctional, broken or wrong.
You can’t fix what isn’t broken. You can’t heal that which is already healthy.
The emotion itself isn’t the problem. Our relationship with that emotion, however, can become broken and problematic. Giving old trauma or future outsized control over our present moment can be one such problem. Expressing honest emotion in unhealthy ways is another. It’s normal to be afraid in frightening situations. It is normal to worry about risk when it exists. It is normal to feel regret, sadness, grief, and feel the entire spectrum of emotion. What you do with those normal natural emotions is the key of it, not the feelings that naturally bubble up.
There is a serene quality around the Queen of Cups card. It reminds me of the example from the Tao Te Ching. Stirring muddy water or trying to see through muddy water doesn’t really help much. But if you wait…if you abide with the muddiness and let it be what it is…then with a little time the mud will naturally settle and things will become clearer and better again.
Difficult emotions are what they are just like muddy water is what it is. Sit with them as they are, and they will settle as sure as gravity pulls the mud from water. The emotions are what they are. The healing comes from how we relate to them.
Here I am reminded of Dharma Drum Mountain, a Chan Buddhist education center in Taiwan and their website where they offer this strategy for dealing with problems in the 21st century:
Face it : face the difficulty squarely Accept it : accept the reality of the difficulty Deal with it : deal with the difficulty with wisdom and compassion Let it go : afterwards, let go of it
This card suggests that this strategy for dealing with problems might be a good strategy for a healthy relationship with our normal, day to day emotions
I shouldn’t have to end this post with a disclaimer, but times being what they are, it’s necessary. Tarot has no place in medical or mental health care. I’m in no way talking about real illnesses. This isn’t about clinical depression or anxiety disorder or any other genuine mental health concern. This blog, podcast, and Tarot writ large is a tool for growth and for day to day stress management. Tarot is a normal natural way to do that. Getting real mental health help if and when you need is a normal, natural thing to do too.
It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to be ok too. Heal what needs healed, and abide in peace with that which is unbroken.
Thank you so much for listening. TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. If you enjoy these (almost) daily Tarot readings and the other Tarot content please support this work through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where you can be a Patron of the Tarot Arts and receive exclusive access to members only content, tarot how-to, special offers and more. Links are in the episode description for podcast listeners.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
There is something to be said for comfort zones.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
It’s been a deeply weird couple of weeks. The hiatus I had hoped to take this week is pushed back until probably mid-September, because of life and stuff. We are back to the usual pattern for a little while, and we are back to the Alleyman’s Tarot. I know I keep saying this, but this card, “The Alley” by deck creator Seven Dane Asmund, truly is my favorite right now. This may be my cue to set aside the deck for daily short sip posts and write a proper, deep-dive review. I wanted to live with the deck and use it and post with it for a while before writing about it to any extent. This is something special, and deserves more than the usual hot take unboxing first look review. I could rant a paragraph about the visual of this card, all night and neon and cyberpunk and Neuromancer. Good book,that. I highly recommend it.
This card in particular landed right in my personal wheelhouse. I hope it speaks to you, too, but it is saying a lot to me. I hope you forgive this little bit of personal indulgence and a post that pays no attention to the outward, zeitgeist energy landscape.
Landscape is a good word here. The Alley card is important to the lore and backstory of the deck. The Alley is where the Alleyman lives out his life’s calling, where he finds his raison d’etre, so wrapped in his comfort zone that it becomes an extension of self more than mere solace. It speaks of our native landscape. By native I mean our most natural, most authentic environment, not necessarily the one of our biological birth.
I’m enjoying that music is available to put on YouTube shorts, TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. For once you get to “hear” what I intuitively heard with this card.
When I say the word “hear” in the context of a Tarot reading, I mean clairaudience. You’ve heard the word clairvoyant, right? That means clear seeing, and it talks about intuitive mental images. Clairaudience is “clear hearing” and it the word for when intuition comes as sounds, music or words instead of mental images. It uses auditory imagination to the same purpose as visual imagination in a reading. It is like ear worming a favorite song, except that it isn’t your song. It is meant for your client or as something you’ve both heard before to help you find a mutual point of reference as you talk through the Tarot reading. In this case it is a bit of both. “You Belong to the City” by Glen Frey came through intuitively and it was also one of my favorites back in the day.
It was inspiration to challenge my comfort zone and find my homecoming.
Seven Dane Asmund writes of the card as quote “my community” and “where everything belongs if there is nowhere else to be or go.” End Quote.
Another song came to mind. It is from the same era, “A Sort of Homecoming” by U2. Put all of this together and I think we get the essential message that we each define our home and homecoming. Just like the old adage that home is where the heart is.
It is a card of finding your natural habitat, whatever it may be. I floundered and felt profoundly misfit in the place where I was raised. It was a bath in itching powder. Suburbia was a warm sunset. Even for an introvert, there is life and light and energy to be found. I belong to the city at its edge.
For some, a foray into a city at night is an exciting adventure. For some – like my rural evangelical birth family – it would be intimidating, or even terrifying. More importantly, for many others, it is every night, it is life, it is home.
To state the overly obvious, a lot of people are born in cities. Being at home there would be the norm. The Alley card is outside of that ordinary. It speaks to me of found family and a found home, a liminal space even within a familiar urban environment. It is a place to belong when you’ve walked away from the places where you don’t.
I wonder if the Alley here can also hint at our shadow side, the unclaimed self. If you feel drawn to this card today, what alleyway lurks within? What dark and liminal space within you is calling to you to befriend it. What dark alley is inviting you home? Is your inner alleyway one that others fear but you know to be filled with shelter and neon light and other wandering spiritual orphans just like you? Urban neon may frighten some, but it is homecoming for others.
Seek your unique kind of light, the kind that makes the dark night into your own neon homecoming.
The Devil card reminds us to guard our energies, pay attention to the gate and know your nemesis.
No.
Nope.
Wrong address. Try again.
Sorry, no.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today I’m back to the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. Today’s card is the Devil from the major arcana. This card is clearly based on the classic Pamela Smith art. I’m curious to see what the Alleyman’s guide has to say about it and who this artist is, but first let’s talk about the energy that this little effer is spontaneously resonating with this morning: I’m getting both “guard your energy” and “know your nemesis”
And yes, I am very deliberately and specifically using the word resonating.
Energy resonance is important to both of threads of the message coming through the Devil card today.
Even though I say a message is “coming through” a particular card, I don’t want you to get the idea that the cards are a portal for spirits like something out of horror movies or 1970s TV.Our language tends to anthropomorphize things like this, but in reality they are pieces of paper with pictures on them. Tarot cards, ouija boards, rune stones, I ching coins, chicken bones…all the divination and oracle whatevers…are all simply amplifiers for our own inner, innate intuition.
Anyway, here is where the message starts to scatter into different directions. The starting point about resonance has to do with that portal for spirits vs intuition amplifier piece of it. I hear “guard your energy. “
The Devil card isn’t a happy card. It is as much of a majority-dark card as the Sun card is majority-light. The Devil card is a good card in that it serves as an important, real-talk reminder that there are indeed harmful things that exist in the universe.
When I say “hear” I mean that the intuition comes as words, sounds or music instead of mental images. In this case, I hear “don’t invite in” as in don’t think of Tarot cards as a portal to invite energies in for a personal visit. Use them like hearing aids to better listen in to what the universal energies are broadcasting for us all to hear.
It doesn’t matter what the energy seems to be. Sure, give it a listen but then make your own decision about it and don’t “invite it in.” We’ve all heard about the devils in disguise or wolves in sheep’s clothing. That can go for anything. That born-again christian thing about “invite jesus into your heart” is red lights and sirens four alarm emergency creeping heebie jeebies level stuff. Don’t invite other people’s definition of good into your heart of hearts any more than you would invite other people’s definition of evil. The only thing that deserves to be in there is your own light, love, compassion and all the wonderful things that you already are.
The best way to guard your energy is to up its wattage. I forget where I heard this example, but think of a cozy, warm, well lit house on a cold winter night. If you open the front door, does the cold and dark come in or does the light and warm spill out? The Devil card is the weather report. Our responsibility in that dark night is to close the door and save on the heating bill.
That’s one thread.
The other is akin to Socrates telling us to “know thyself.” It also came through as “the phone call is coming from inside the house.” I’ve never seen the movie that is from, but I have heard it referenced a lot. This goes back to the empathy check we’ve talked about in the past. Especially when you are reading cards or doing any sort of psychic work, It pays to stop and pay attention every now and then and ask yourself if what you are feeling is your emotion alone (which is perfectly OK, whatever that feeling may be) OR are you just empathically resonating with the zeitgeist energy or group of people around you. An easy visualization for that is to imagine a force field, light or being surrounded by your favorite protective crystal or symbol. Just for a minute, let that visualization shut out the resonance and outer noise and listen. In that quiet, protected space that you’ve imagined up for yourself, what do you feel? What are the conditions inside your protective bubble compared to how they were before?
And what do you do if they are the same?
What if the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak?
I’m reminded of a couple of more quotes. Sun Tzu in The Art of War tells us “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Know your enemy and know yourself, you say? What if they are both the same?
So know your nemesis. Is there a real world threat, is what you are feeling resonance with external energies, or is the enemy within the gates?
This particular Devil card is very similar to Pamela Smith’s 1909 rendition, but it differs in a couple of ways that I think are significant.
Most notably the chained figures and the monolith they are chained to are all proportionally larger compared to the Baphomet / Devil figure on top. The face on the monolith particularly captures my attention. There is so much here.
Are you the one holding yourself prisoner? Are you your nemesis? Are you the one inside the house making scary phone calls?
Only you can defeat that nemesis.
It also brings me back to where I started with this card this morning. In true Taoist style we remember that when there is resonance there is also dissonance. If there is no enemy within, then the gate is rattling from the vibe outside of it. As Winston Churchill said, “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
When it comes to Tarot readings and professional psychic work like this, sometimes the enemy at the gate has the wrong address. This is a consideration particular to anyone who is thinking about taking on the onus of reading for other people.
Sometimes the energy at the gate isn’t yours at all. Resonance to a degree, for sure, but less of a general zeitgeist energy but an energy that is directed toward a particular client – or in this case, a particular audience. I suspect that is where all the “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…” posts on social media comes from.
That is where I am with this card today. Zero personal resonance. I am so not in a place to work with the Devil card. Still here is this message that the Tarot muses want delivered. So here we are, paragraphs into this card reading, done with the hope that it helps someone somewhere out there in cyberspace.
I hate to say it as “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…”
It always gets my hackles up when people say that. It strikes me as a bit egotistical. Ego. Now THAT is the inner nemesis of a good professional psychic. Maybe nobody needs to hear any damn thing we say, and we need to stay cognizant of that little fact. Overblown ego is a warning sign of a grifter or a sincere psychic who is struggling a bit with their own spiritual growth. Know your limits folks. All this talk about guarding your energies, guarding your boundaries, asking for help if needed and taking time to heal goes double if you read for others as an amateur, times ten if you work professionally. I think dissonance, not resonance, is the process behind the “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…” trope. That sounds like a message you’ve been entrusted to deliver, BUT it doesn’t resonate either personally or with general energies.
I’m not sure how to say it any better, but there has to be something a little more down to earth, something a little more along the lines of “for your consideration, take or leave it as you like, but this message delivery is not for me.
Nope.
Wrong address.
Sorry, try again later.
If this sparks an idea for you, great. If not, that’s cool too. There is big, clear energy with this card, but it’s 100% not for me today.
I just finished a big project that I’ll be talking more about in September. For now I’m going to go sip some iced coffee and go into self care mode for the rest of the day.
Before I forget….this is the second of two Devil cards in the Alleyman’s deck. I just read the guidebook and it talks about not owning up to your inner desires as opposed to projecting them onto other people or onto your circumstances. I guess I was in that ballpark with minding boundaries and inner awareness and all that. The artist for this card is I.S.N.Y.R. It puts a focus on the “temptation” version of the classic Devil image rather than the “evil in the world” aspect which differentiates the card from the desire aspect of the Lovers card. Hmm, maybe I should read that part of the book too. Or maybe this is my cue to sit down, read the guide book and be done with this my interpretation then theirs motif. Seven Dane Asmund of Publishing Goblin, LLC wrote the guidebook and created the Alleyman’s Tarot and is used here with permission from back in the early days of the kickstarter. I am so grateful for that! Whether a short sip or a long quaffe, this deck really is elevating my Tarot skills even after all of these years. This thing really is the Stradavarious of Tarot decks.
Just a reminder that all things TaoCraft will be taking a short hiatus mid August. Probably around the 16th to the 20th give or take a little.
Meanwhile, think you so much for listening! I appreciate you.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Some days flow beats fight.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Of all the meanings for the Two of Pentacles, adaptability and to a lesser degree multitasking are grabbing my attention.
That brings me back to the same image and analogy that always seems to come with the two of pentacles: dynamic equalibrium.
Pentacles brings the card into the practical real world realm of things. The two card of a suit almost always points to a balance of some sort. Most of the time a unicycle comes to mind. Most of us have seen a clown or performer on a unicycle at some point in our lives, at least on YouTube or TV. We get it how they make those constant small back and forth adjustments with the wheel to keep their balance. When we see it the process is understandable whether we could actually do it ourselves or not.
Today, my science geek intuition takes me back to high school chemistry and dynamic equilibrium across a semipermeable membrane, which isn’t nearly as entertaining of a mental image as a clown on a unicycle juggling bowling pins. But you’ll have that.
I think there is a reason for the nerdiness. It adds an, ahem, counterbalance, to the notion of dynamic equilibrium.
Rigidity isn’t as successful as adaptability.
The whole science thing is about two solutions on either side of a membrane that lets the -oh, let’s say salt molecules – cross the membrane. The water molecules are the same on either side of the membrane – oh, let’s say it is a bag. Imaging a plastic zip bag filled with way too concentrated salt water, sealed and plunked down in a big bowl of plain water. Imagine your goal is to season your water for cooking pasta. You don’t want just plain water, or your spaghetti will taste pasty and bland. Too much salt and you can’t even choke it down.
If the bag of salt water allows salt through, eventually molecular movement will let the salt adapt to the total amount of water and boom…good spaghetti. But if the bag isn’t adaptable enough to allow that salt through…no go with the pasta water. Same with our metaphoric clown. If he is too rigid and doesn’t move his unicycle wheel to adapt his balance then boom…clown down. Movement and adaptation is needed on both obvious and subtle levels to be successful.
Whether it comes from Charles Darwin, H.G. Wells or a Brad Pitt movie, “adapt or die” is the message here.
It isn’t the energy for every day or every situation. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stand your ground and protect those you love who stand behind you.
Other days, it pays to let water roll off the hill rather than plant your flag on it. Today’s energy asks for adaptability and gives us a list of quotes to back it up:
Adam Savage is quoted as saying “follow the process, not the plan” Do what you know works, even if that wasn’t the original plan.
Bruce Lee famously said “Be water, my friend” Today is a day for water that adopts the shape of its teapot. A drop of water falling from a cave ceiling changes it shape to match the contours of the cave floor, but over millennia it builds an immovable column of stalagmite rock.
A little adaptability now can show you the way to success later.
Thank you so much for reading and listening!
I’ll be going on another short summer hiatus in the middle of August so please stay tuned to the blog for more detail. Private email readings and everything is open and available, the same as always until then.
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TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Many long years in the before time, a wise man spoke.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
A lifetime and a half ago, I used to work in health care. How we got from there to Tarot blog & podcast is another story for another day. When I was a student, I was very lucky to do my ER rotation with a Canadian doctor who used to work in a very rural, northern part of the country. He was a private pilot and literally flew from one remote clinic to another to provide basic, general practice health care. Here in the land of bankruptcy prices, brainless shotgun labs and cookbook internal medicine, his expertise is arguably a lost art. He gifted me with a pearl of wisdom that applies to damn near everything and has proven true time and again for the past 35 or so years.
Listen.
He said “Diagnosis is easy. Listen to your patients and they will tell you what is wrong with them.”
By that same token, supporting your own well being is easy. Listen to what you body is telling you. Listen to what your emotions and intuition are telling you. Let logic tell you if things are getting too far off track.
Listen to yourself. Listen to what you and your true nature need and do that. Or at least try to accommodate your night owl or morning person self as much as your schedule allows.
Today’s card is the Night Owl card from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck, illustrated by WolfSkullJack. Seven Dane Asmund interprets the card as “that thing you know but won’t or can’t admit to yourself.” It feels akin to the energy that Ted Andrews writes about for another nocturnal creature, wolves, for his version of the Moon card. He writes that “When wolf shows up it is time to trust our inner guidance…”
So how do you do that? How do you trust your inner guidance? How do you come to terms with unacknowlable inner truth?
Listen.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Asmund’s night owl and Andrew’s moon wolf are nocturnal beings.
When the day is gone and the night arises, when all of the distractions go dark, you can’t escape yourself. All that is left is to listen.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
A new plan is in motion and you can play a part.
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the three of wands from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.
This card, along with a couple of others, suits August energy particularly well -at least here in the northern hemisphere. The seven of pentacles reminds us to be hands-off and let nature do its thing. The eight of wands is hints at hands that are tied. Things are in progress but out of your control and there is nothing you can do until the penny drops and the arrows land.
The three of wands has an outward appearance of waiting, like the other cards, but with a greater degree of mental alertness and engagement. This card signifies a time of expansion and growth, but with inner attention as much as outward motion. In that sense, it is a little bit like a Chariot light card. It’s akin to the major arcana’s chariot card but less intense. It’s watching your homemade caramel sauce like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. It isn’t slam into the side of a mountain level stuff like the test-pilot chariot card, but it is about being alert and watchful. It’s like chef Anne Burrel says. You can go “from master to disaster” in a few seconds if you aren’t careful.
The three of wands lets us know that stuff is happening. It is a wide horizon, expansive energy. There is plenty of room here to flex your intellectual muscle and emotional maturity. This is a big open mental space where you can fuse logic and intuition into foresight.
Personally, I identify with the “stuff is happening” part of this. I’m streamlining my email readings so people can send their questions and order the reading in one seamless process when you use the commissions menu on the ko-fi page. I hope to have more ebooks coming online as the Fall and Winter progress. I’m working on some options that will hopefully allow me to inflation proof my private reading prices, although I still need your support for this blog and podcast through the shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees on the ko-fi page.
Please stay tuned for all of those announcements. BUT for today I have something else in mind. Today is August 1, mid season between summer solstice and the fall equinox, and that seems like an auspicious time, and the three of wands seems like an auspicious card to introduce card cuts into all of my readings.
Cutting the cards is a Tarot tradition. Sometimes it is just a part of shuffling the deck. I like the tradition of cutting the cards and letting the client choose which portion of the deck we use to draw the cards. I’ve done this forever for in-person readings. It really does bring your intuition and your energy into the reading in a more powerful way. Even though the connection isn’t affected by time or distance, when we are working individually at a distance through email readings or collectively at a distance through the blog and podcast, it still helps to forge some sort of connection. Of course the most potent connection is your decision to read the blog, listen to the podcast, or purchase a private reading. Making a connection with an individual reading is easy. In person or online we talk about your question or whatever it is that prompted you to get the reading in the first place. Individual email readings are just as easy. Whenever I see your name and question (or permission for an open reading) in print, that’s when the connection clicks into place.
I’ve been experimenting with making the connection to blog and podcast and you tube readings more personal. You might have seen those in the “You Choose Interactive” posts. It clicked, but not as well as I’d hoped even with embellishments like crystal or shapes or something else to help the choice besides “left, center, or right.”
If individual choice is awkward, let’s try a collaborative choice. You choose. We’ll try left, center anr right again but as a group.
Want to play along? Just put a comment somewhere with your choice of left, center or right. Drop it here on the blog, over on the you tube channel, or on any of the socials (I’ll put links in the podcast episode description). In upcoming videos and posts, I’ll cut the deck into three piles. Tell me whether you want me to draw the short sip card from the left, center or right. I’ll watch the comments, and whenever there is a clear majority, that’s the cut I’ll use for the next week or so in the short sip readings. I’ll put the call out for a new cut, and you can comment your choice again. And so it goes. Even if you choice isn’t in the majority, the whole process is energized by your effort and intentions, making it better for everyone. I wonder what Carl Jung and his collective unconscious theory would say about this exercise? Put a little energy in, get a more energized reading back. Fair enough, right?
Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to take your time, browse the blog, and please leave a comment with your choice of deck stack for the next few readings. Heck, comment about anything in the blog / cast. Or go all out and ask a question! I won’t promise it will all make it into the blog, but all questions are welcome. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I’ll see you at the next sip!
We all have at least one – go get yours with today’s short sip Tarot and the Ten of Pentacles
We’ve all got one. Or a bunch. It’s the weekend. Go get yours.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
We’ve all heard this one before. I’d say this card is a broken record, but since digital and streaming doesn’t have that particular glitch I’ll skip the reference that no one this side of gen X would really get.
The song remains the same. We’ve all heard this one before. Which, in the Tarot and personal growth business, is more of a validation than being a mere cliche.
I like to think that when a card, like today’s ten of pentacles, keeps harping on the same idea, it adds to the meaning instead of diluting it. Things like “money can’t buy happiness” or “little things mean a lot” or “the simple pleasures are the best” are all platitudes and aphorisms for a reason. The generalized truth behind them is potent enough that it is like archetype and aphorism combined. Whatever big word you want to call it, these repeating messages woven through a long time Tarot practice are worth listening to.
Pentacles are associated with the element of earth. They symbolize wealth, money, career, practicality and our relationship with the physical realm. Ten is as large as the number cards get.
In the I Ching, the Chinese “book of changes” which has been used for guidance in a way very akin to Tarot, there is the idea of changing lines. When you use three coins to methodically choose with I Ching hexagram to read, three of either heads or tails is considered a “changing line.” The line in the hexagram is maximum yin or maximum yang. There is an idea in Taoism that anything in its extreme holds the seed of its opposite. If life is always changing and in motion, then I see that as meaning a tipping point. Like that old children’s game – it is a pot so full that one more bean can tip it over and spill into becoming something else.
That is what is happening with the ten of pentacles. Sure, it shows an idealized happy family, pets included. There is a tipping point here – and it isn’t what you might think.
The opposite of maximum coins isn’t bankruptcy. The opposite of the happiness depicted isn’t misery. The tipping point here is from the tangible into the intangible. Of all the contentment depicted in the card and in all those RWS derived decks, none of them are dependent on being rich. Food, water, shelter, basics sustain life. Beyond that, the truly precious things are at once both practically free and unspeakably priceless; people who care about you, a friendly dog wagging their tail when they see you, a little sit in the shade on a hot day or a soft chair near the heater on a cold one.
Innocent or guilty the little pleasures are what the ten of pentacles is talking about today. Think of those photos of President Biden in his aviator sunglasses smiling and enjoying an ice cream cone. That’s what we’re talking about. He is well paid and as powerful as it gets. Yet, how much does an ice cream cone cost? Change from the sofa cushions would close to cover it. Almost anyone can access it. Yet the pleasure the ice cream can bring – that part is priceless and even easier to get. All you have to do is let yourself have it. The ice cream is just the carrier, it’s the delivery method for the happy. Pick your delivery method. It can be any little thing that delights you. It can be any little thing that you have on hand right here, right now. Mine today is my Spotify playlists.
Go.
Go get your inexpensive treasure. Then let yourself have the happy.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate you, your follows, likes and any shares you can spare.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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