What it is: The Whip. Harshness or conflict is at hand. Even if it doesn’t directly involve you, it impacts the environment where you live and function. Think of war or inflation that makes things worse for everyone. Now is not a time for impulse. Prepare for any storms, real or metaphoric, as best as you can. A paramedic instructor once told me that “if you prepare for the emergency, then the emergency goes away” meaning that it doesn’t change what is actually happening but it seems like less of a scary big deal than it would have otherwise been. Calm is contagious.
What to do: The Key. The Key card indicates that a choice is at hand. The choices we make today are the key that unlocks (not predicts) our future. Choosing not to choose is still a choice. You can choose inaction. You can choose to watch, wait, learn. You can choose to accept the outcome of inaction or you can choose to do everything you can to unlock the outcome you want. In the words of David Axelrod of the Barak Obama presidential campaign “The least we can do is everything we can do.”
Even if things don’t go the way you want, at least go into that situation knowing you did everything you could to make it right.
The time has come to choose your side. The fence, the middle ground has thinned so that those who do not choose will fall unwillingly to one side or another. Action speaks louder than words. Inaction is no longer silent.
In the words of Desmund Tutu, “If you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
How to do it: The Bear. The Lenormand Tarot deck gained popularity in the eighteenth century, but bears symbolized protection then just as much as our ‘mama bear’ meme does today. Important choices are seldom easy and even less often consequence free. Protection can guide some choices. Choose the thing that protects your path forward. Choose the thing that protects the people you love (including you.) Choose the thing that protects your resources during lean times. Choose what lets you see the happiness you already have. Choose the path that protects your inner peace.
Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler copyright 2021 all rights reserved used with permission llwellynpublishing.com
A doorway works perfectly fine in both directions.
Never mind the dedicated pressure triggered in and out doors at the supermarket, I’m talking about your ordinary door.
Threshold, portal, liminal space – its all the same basic idea here.
The collective energies have been niggling at us through the eight of cups for a while now, and it isn’t done with us yet. The energy hinted at turning a corner with it as we talked about the other day in the Standing in the Shimmer post and the brilliant @spiralseatarot on threads once again wrote the eight of cups and about holding space for good things to fill the gap where we have let go of the things that no longer serve us.
Inspired by the gap in the cups that she pointed out, I intuitively heard “portal in time.” Time is something worth exploring in connection with the eight of cups.
The card at its core is about letting go of something while at the same time walking toward something better. It looks back and ahead simultaneously from the portal, the gap in the cups, this bubble we forever live in, this present moment.
Setting mindfulness and the present moment aside for another time, let’s think of the two directions we can cast our attention with this card.
With the classic Pamela Smith artwork, we can’t see what the figure is walking toward. The future is literally out of view. The crescent and round face in the clear, cloudless sky very likely was mean to communicate moon energy, but the crescent and round shapes seem a bit of a moon and sun combination – yin and yang together. That with the clear, cloudless sky both hint at infinite potential held in that out-of-view future.
The Tao Te Ching tells us that one becomes two (the unified oneness of everything can be understood in harmony of opposites, yin and yang) and the two becomes three (I see it as an echo of biological reproduction) The three becomes five (the five classic elements) which in turn comprise the totality of the physical world to this system of thought.
Long story short, the future hold a LOT of potential with this card.
The portal to the future, the gap in the cups, the space Spiralsea advises us to hold is where we draw from that infinite potential. The gap/portal/space is this right-now moment where we make the decisions and take the real world actions that influence the way things go from here. The figure on the card is taking a step. It’s not the cliff dive we see on the Fool card. This has a deliberate quality. This is a decided first step in a new direction.
It takes courage to step in to a new and unknown direction.
It takes courage to deal with the past.
If the background of this image hints at an unknowable but potential laden future, and space in the cups is our portal to time and the sacred liminal space in which we hold our hopes and intentions for the future, then the foreground deals with the past. The ground is beige and barren, with the rest of the card filled with blue, sky and water. The cups rest solidly on the bottom edge of the card.
On one hand this card is about walking away from a bad situation, expunging something harmful or dismissing something from the past that is of no more value. You’ve heard me quote it dozens of times, this again reminds me of that quote from the movie The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren says something akin to “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become who you were meant to be.”
A change that profound should never be made rashly.
The past may be barren, lifeless ground, but it is ground just the same. It is solid. It exists. It happened, it ain’t changing, the memories are yours forever.
When you walk away from the past, you can’t change what happened but you have absolute control over how the past affects you. In the gap in the cups, in this present moment space we hold, we choose how much of the past we allow through to the present. When we let go of the past, the past events still exist unchanged, but the effect it has on us is transformed.
We aren’t letting go of the literal events of the past, we are releasing the mental and emotional hold those event have on our present moment – and in turn their hold on the future.
The doorway in time we see symbolized here goes two ways. It is a present moment liminal threshold where we can both plant seeds for the future AND stop the past from contaminating those seeds. We can let go of the past’s hold on us at the same time we can choose a new direction.
Please feel free to explore the archives. Type eight of cups or 8 of cups in the search bar on the right side of the page (laptop view) to see more thoughts about this card from old posts.
My first thought today was to do the usual Action Eases Anxiety layout with the usual Lenormand or RWS tarot decks.
But instinct, or intuition, or spirit or the muses – or whatever you want to call it – had another idea.
First, I felt pushed toward the Normal Tarot deck (by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission) Then the layout seemed all wrong. Anxiety is often connected to outside conditions like *gestures wildly* everything in America right now.
At that point I hear “look within”
How very Bene Gesserit.
Look for and listen to your own deep intuition. It speaks quietly, and needs your full attention and maybe some amplification. Any microphone of your choice will do. For me it’s cards. It might be astrology, or a random song on a randomly chosen playlist. It might be that one wise snippet posted by someone in the middle of your nightly doomscroll. Whatever your amplifier of choice, look inside and listen to the spirit and intuition that is in there. Take yourself seriously.
Looking at the deck’s guide, the Drowned King is about tragedy at the hands of hubris. It is biting off more than you can chew, and then choking on it.
I am also reminded of the taijitu. The opposite colored dot in the middle of the widest portion of each color speaks to how anything in the extreme holds the seed of its opposite.
The advice is really about moderation. This is a week for taking the middle way.
Yell too loud and yes, you are heard, but you also let your enemies know where you are. Learn too far forward and you fall down. We’ve been called to action a lot recently by the Knight of Swords, but there are limits. Know yours.
When you’ve been pushing the “edge of the envelope,” you have to know when to “haul it back in” as the movie The Right Stuff put it.
Look inside and listen. You’ll know when to move, and when to stay put. You’ll know when to strive, and when to take smaller and chew so you don’t wind up like the Drowned king.
This card and the inverted star together let us know that we are where we need to be right now. Sit tight. Bloom where you are planted. Be present with here, now. Too much pushing or striving could lead to disaster.
Taking slow sips this week – see you at the next one
After the sun rises it sets. Days and weeks begin, and then they end. Tarot can help set the tone for your day or week. But it can do more.
Tarot gives you a 360 degree view. It can broaden your horizons, it can help you look ahead and plan, but it can also look back and understand.
Daily meditation tarot can help bring a day in for a soft landing just as well as it can get your day off to an inspired start.
The Star is about hope and aspiration and guidance.
In reverse it hears you when your compass is spinning and you don’t know which way to go.
Tonight, the Star suggests that when you don’t know which way to go that means you are already there. Be where you are.
When it is time to move, a new star will rise and you’ll know what to do. For now, bloom where you are planted. Find the contentment and happiness that is already there just waiting for you to feel it.
I don’t often share my own Tarot card draws. It defeats the purpose of looking at the collective energy. Looking at the collective energy benefits us all because the collective energy touches us all in one way or another. Everything is connected, one way or another.
But this week I’ll share the guidance I was given for the week ahead, because I think it is worth sharing. It may not be a reading OF the collective energy, but it is a good way to deal WITH the collective energy this week.
Be still.
Keep quiet. Agitated water stays muddy. Be still to let things settle, to let things become clear as they naturally will. Gravity still works. Things will settle eventually.
Protect your peace.
It is a treasure worth protecting, and protecting it is wisdom worth sharing.
We’ve had a stressful week here in the US. Even I thought we were going to all die in a flash of mutually assured nuclear destruction at the hands of the republicans. (BTW – this is a personal opinion blog and not a public business. As of today, if you are a Republican, support Republicans, want bipartisan cooperation with Republicans, are Chistian evangelical, are Christian nationalist, racist, or any variety of bigot please f**k right the hell off. That energy is not welcome here.)
THAT being said, today is a good day for a shift in focus. Things have been very yang, very outward, very existential crisis lately. It’s ok to turn off the big world news, pull in your energies and focus on you, your immediate personal space for a minute.
You…yes, you. Take just a moment away from the screen. Look around you.
So, how is it? Are you out of the weather? Hungry? Thirsty? Warm/cool enough? Sitting or standing comfortably? Is the room literally on fire? Are you in any immediate danger?
If not, take a deep breath. It’s ok to be ok for a minute.
Sometimes the best dream to chase is being OK with things as they are right here, right now. It is a dream that is forever already true.
I’ve seen the idea attributed to Keanu Reeves, but don’t judge yourself harshly for what you didn’t know. Some things, some emotions, take time to process. Respond to circumstances as best as you can now, but respond differently as you learn more. In the words of Alan Watts “you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.”
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I like to think it’s a writer’s thing.
I call it the niggles when a thought captures your creative imagination and keeps poking at you until you write it. The Ten of Swords has been a little like that the past couple of days.
I originally wrote Action Eases Anxiety as a 2 card layout showing, essentially, what it is and what to do. The cards describe current energies and give a suggestion about how to best navigate them. My thought was to add a third card …. a how-to-do-it card, which would flesh out the sentence, and let the layout echo parts of speech: subject-verb-object in a vague sort of way.
The new, third card was the 10 of swords and it prompted an avalanche of random sayings and platitudes plus a bonus earworm of a song from one of my favorite albums back in the day. It all pointed toward the 10 of swords keyword surrender. Often this surrender is the wave a white flag and admit defeat kind that the dire-looking Pamela Smith artwork would indicate.
In this case the surrender word has a different connotation. It is more like acceptance but not acquiescence. There is an element of going with the flow that we see in the six of swords, but with a much more disturbing undercurrent and context than the six would carry. This card connects to the previous reading in a way the six could not.
Surrender is a way to persist.
Someone on Twitter several years ago captured the absolute essence of this card as it presents today. I can’t remember who it was, but I want to say it was author Chuck Wendig in his You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton era. Whoever it was, they described the Ten of Swords something like “yeah, you are laying on the floor in utter defeat, but while you are down there you look under the sofa and find the car keys you lost two weeks ago.”
Today, the so-called negative aspects of the card are only negative or bad from a hyper active, frenetic, pushing, over-achieving point of view. Sure, it’s bad from an all-yang sort of perspective. If you look at it from a more yin-balanced perspective, surrender IS persisting.
Surrender lets you understand your situation and deal with it honestly and rationally (after all, intellect is a swords thing.)
A psychiatrist at a hospital where I worked a long time ago once said that “the decision not to decide is still a decision.”
So by that same token, waiting and watching IS doing something.
Yes, it’s true that if you wait for the perfect time to do something you’ll never do it because the time is never perfect, BUT timing can be better if not perfect. Waiting for perfect is the problem – being thoughtful and strategic is not (again a swords / air / intellect thing)
Surrender and retreat isn’t defeat, it is advancing in a new direction.
“He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”
Adaptation is survival, and that is the key to persisting in this energy.
Happiness isn’t at your fingertips. It’s inside them.
Looking for happiness is like trying to buy a one of a kind item that you already own. Or to paraphrase the adage Mark Salzman references in Iron and Silk – looking for happiness is like looking for the donkey you are already riding on.
Only you can decide what, if anything, makes you happy. Only you can decide if and when you are happy. No one can else can make you happy – only you.
And if that is true, then no one else can take your happiness away.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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