Today’s Tarot: Meditation Comes To You

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


May is both National Meditation Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.

Tarot can play a part in both. This month, I’m returning to where it all began with daily meditation style Tarot readings on the Sage Sips main blog, the Substack and the socials. Your private readings, memberships and virtual coffees all support these free collective Tarot readings.

EIGHT OF PENTACLES: Meditation meets you where you live. It can be found in almost any simple, repetitive task. The mindless can be a portal to the mindful.

I’ve quoted Alan Watts so many times before, but it applies here again – “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

True to Tarot, even the earthy, ground oh-so-practical Pentacle cards have a spiritual side. Pentacle spirituality is particularly akin to Zen and Taoist spirituality.

Simple productivity can feed your soul as much as a job feeds your bank account and in turn your stomach. That isn’t to say that your job has to be ultra spiritual. Any work can be of service and finding a job that you love is a treasure beyond money.

Feeling and being productive improves mood: Action eases anxiety, literally.

Easy, repetitive, ‘mindless’ activity is relaxing. No wonder things like knitting, crochet, jogging, hiking, gardening, sports of all sorts are all popular hobbies. Anything that occupies your hands and body while bringing your mind to the moment at hand is meditation. In these million different ways, meditation meets you right where you live if you allow it to be there. Meditation meets you where you live and brings a little mental health help right along with it.

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deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund,  used with permission Publishing Goblin LLC

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PeaceTarot is your DIY guide to Daily Meditation style Tarot readings. Learn to read for yourself and bring a peaceful tarot moment to your day.

Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot, The Bear

Mama Bear meets Lenormand Tarot

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Today, two points jump to mind about the Lenormand Tarot deck as a whole rather than the Bear card specifically.

It is interesting that Lenormand has several cards with (non-human) animals as the whole focus and symbolism: bear, snake, birds or owls, fox, stork, mouse and fish. Marseilles / Visconti / RWS format decks have animals sprinkled through the deck but never as the primary or sole focus of a card. The closest is the Strength card which prominently features a lion, but it is more about the human’s interaction with the lion and the symbolism about strength and leadership that is associated with lions rather than the animal’s actual characteristics or behavior. Other than that, we mostly see the knight’s horses, a few dogs, an ox, a fish in a cup and a lobster taking a moonlight stroll on a beach.

There are two full decks that share a similar energy to Lenormand’s animal cards: the Medicine Cards oracle deck by David Carson and Jamie Sams and Animal Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews. I’m sentimentally attached to both of these decks because Medicine Cards was my first deck and entry point to reading any cards, Tarot or otherwise. I have always had great respect for Ted Andrews and his writings have been utterly influential and invaluable to me. I was so fortunate to meet him at one of his Animal Speak workshops around the time that Animal Wise Tarot was first published. There is a significant intuitive connection from between these decks and the Lenormand, more than typical RWS decks seem to have. This is the first I’ve noticed that energy-similarity since this is the first animal-symbol Lenormand card we’ve drawn.

The Bear card is about that well-known “mama bear” protectiveness, and begs the question of who protects you? Who do you need to protect? Where do you need to protect yourself better? Where are you too guarded?

The other thing that captures my attention is the 10 of clubs on the Bear card.

All 36 of the Lenormand cards have a playing card on them in addition to their primary symbol. Not all of the playing cards can be represented in the smaller Lenormand deck. Christopher Butler’s guidebook that came with this Healing Light Lenormand deck is oddly silent about the playing card references. I’m looking for more information about that part of the Lenormand cards and will update you later in the series.

In my book Peace Tarot, I give you an easy technique for using regular playing cards to find your Tarot daily meditation card meaning if you don’t have a Tarot deck to use. There is a link where you can buy a copy of Peace Tarot above the video if you are interested in learning more about DIY daily meditation style Tarot, that works even if you don’t own a Tarot deck. Using that method, the 10 of clubs connects with the 10 of wands, which is a different energy than the bear. The bear to my mind today is connecting with a major arcana energy much more akin to the Emperor card is also connected with strength and protectiveness. It is difficult to access that kind of major arcana vibe with the playing deck (we talk about that in Peace Tarot, too)

If you live in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh PA, USA keep an eye on your local library websites. I’ll be presenting a Tarot for relaxation workshop based on the information in Peace Tarot at a few locations this Fall. It’s a very inexpensive .pdf in the Sage Words Tarot Shop, I hope you’ll consider giving it a read.

In honor of 10 years of Peace Tarot and how meaningful and useful a daily meditation Tarot practice has been for me over 30 years of card reading, I’ve decided to return to daily meditation Tarot readings for the collective energy in the blog through New Year 2024 which will mark the one year anniversary of TaoCraft Tarot relaunching as Sage Words Tarot. I’ll decide then what, if anything is next. After all the upheaval in the world since the pandemic (politically since 2016 here in the U.S.) a return to some steadiness and simplicity is probably a pretty good idea.

Instagram and Threads is still the best social media to catch me if you want to actually interact. I’m Sage Words Tarot on all the socials (except Twitter – X . I quit that mess months ago) I hope you’ll follow along here, on the socials, on ko-fi or the Substack weekly newsletter. The newsletter happens on Thursdays. Next Wendsday “Learn With Me” will be back with a review of the Healing Light Lenormand deck as a whole thing that I bought – on sale from Llwellyn Publishing. Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!

Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler © 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.

I wish you Peace

Proceeds from the sale of PeaceTarot ebook in the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders / MSF

All proceeds from the sale of PeaceTarot (first edition) in the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders who provides medical services to all places in need including times of war.

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PeaceTarot is a downloadable .pdf ebook that teaches you DIY one card daily meditation Tarot readings. Includes peace themed card meanings for a full deck of RWS style Tarot cards. $5 or more (pay what you want) 25 pages formatted to 8.5 x 11 standard printer paper

Enjoy

Welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot: a one card meditation Tarot reading in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee.

Today’s card is the Fool, traditionally the first card in the major arcana part of the Tarot deck.

Here we have yet another example how one card can have multiple layers or threads of meaning. Over time, every card has picked up about a bazillion and a half key word meanings and short interpretations.

As we talked about with the Judgement card yesterday, just because one meaning is given for one reading, and another meaning is used in another session or by another reading doesn’t mean that one interpretation was right and the other was wrong. It just goes to show how Tarot has been able to stay relevant as useful tool for insight, understanding and personal growth. With the abundance of key words, a card can adjust to meet the needs and energies of the moment while staying true to its key symbolism and core meaning?

That’s where personal intuition comes in. We all have it. We can all develop it. But sometimes it is easier to just ask someone. I mean, generally speaking anyone can learn to change the oil in their car. With practice and study they could become a really good card mechanic. I could do that – but I don’t want to. I take it to a pro for that. If you don’t want to sort out which thread of meaning a card holds for you, that’s what I’m here for. Not only can I do a full on reading for you, I can consult with you to get a better understanding of a reading you’ve done for yourself. But that’s beside the point.

The Fool card has a couple of core meanings. When that happens in a Tarot card, most of the smaller keyword meanings tend to fall under the heading of the larger core meanings. In this case, the Fool can point toward a new beginning in some way, or it can be a reminder of the value of play and lightheartedness. It is a matter of pure intuition which to use in any given reading that you are doing.

Today, my sense of it the vast general energy out here in the world wide webbernet is pointing toward the playful side of things. I’m not talking about some cutsey sit-com sillyness. Sometimes the Fool card will point to the wisdom that can be spoken through comedy.

In an interview about his book Scorpion’s Gate, author Richard A. Clarke said that sometimes more truth can be told through fiction than nonfiction. The same is true of comedy. A spoonful of laughter helps the difficult ideas go down.

That’s not quite right for today. This is a subtle shift within that core. The energy isn’t as much with the new beginnings side of things, althought if you’ve been needing a push to start something, this could easily be that nudge you’ve been needing.

This isn’t talking about giggly silly play. This isn’t quite talking about learning through humor. It feels like permission.

We’re told that it’s OK to not be OK. That’s true. But it is also OK to be OK. Even in the middle of a time where things are not OK, it is perfectly fine to have a moment where you enjoy something. It is OK to take a moment to play, to allow yourself a moment of enjoyment. Don’t worry – you can get back to being stressed and depressed and all that other stuff in a minute.

Whatever it is, take a deep breath, take a minute, and enjoy.

A Sentence Suspended In Time

This post is not going the way I thought it would. This is about the 10th re-write of something I’d hoped to post last Wednesday – or something like that. Even after all of these years, cool & fascinating stuff still happens with the cards. I’m not 100% comfortable with how self-referential this is turning out to be. At the same time, I feel pushed by intuition to share the stuff that has been going on inside my head, the hope being that it will show you a little bit about how valuable a daily Tarot practice and DIY Tarot can be. Then of course, I hope you will click over to the shop and buy PeaceTarot to learn how to tap into the coolness for yourself. So shameless self-promotion out of the way, let’s take a peek at Tarot, social media and a sentence suspended in time.

The daily cards from this week have been niggling at me for days. I originally started the series with the intent of connecting a very young-seeming audience on a new (to me) social media platform. The intent was to draw a simple daily card with a short stand alone message with the hope it would help whoever stumbled across it. As the week went on a pattern emerged. It was like a slowly unwinding message, a paragraph draped across an entire work week.

  • Justice (reversed): You have done / are doing something boneheaded. Just stop. Do better next time.
  • Three of Swords: Use your street smarts. Use what you know.
  • Five of Cups: Mistakes happen. It can’t rain all the time, but neither is it sunny all the time. Let it go, this will pass.
  • Six of Wands: Make peace with yourself and the rest falls into place.
  • King of Cups: Spiritual guidance may come in its own time and at its own pace, but it always, always comes when it is needed. Even when you don’t know that it is needed.

I’ve tried a half dozen times to write this post, but it just wasn’t coming together. When writing a post feels more like a sparring match the message is often as much for me as for the audience, usually more. When the message is detached, channeled for a client or for someone “out there” in cyberspace, it flows in a different way. When it is something I need to get my head around, then the niggling and wrangling begins.

Today’card, the King of Cups, is proof in action of its own message. Even though I’ve been wanting to knit the first three cards together for a while, it needed the King of Cups’ message to feel right, to be complete.  I didn’t know it was needed, but here it is after taking its own good sweet time to arrive.

This is how the slow motion message reads now; You are doing something bone-headed. Just stop. Use some street smarts. Letting it continue might lead to bigger regrets later. Let it go. Be at peace with yourself and the right opportunities will come. Let guidance and opportunity unfold with its own timing and trust the process of intuition.

I know, I know. I should – and do – trust the intuitive process. If I didn’t we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  We all need little reminders every now and then. Even though it is an absolutely normal, needed, everyday, commonplace practice, sometimes the marketing and promotion aspects of owning and running a business (especially an artistic, esoteric, service business like this one) make me a little uncomfortable. I know my shit. It feels a little wearisome and narcissistic to have to keep telling everyone that I know my shit and am good at what I do. But that’s another story. Back to the cards.

These particular cards are courtesy of my new Tik Toc account. I thought it might be a good way to reach a younger audience that wasn’t dialed into Instagram or Twitter. I push to Facebook and Tumblr, but don’t interact with them directly very often. I just enjoy IG and Twitter more. Logically speaking, social media is both a fun and low cost promotional resource. More promotion, more clients…and I need the cash flow as much as anyone else. So what is there to lose giving a new (to me) platform a try? Short format videos is a good way to flip a card, give a sentence, and then come here for a longer interpretation. Easy.

The mechanics of it are easy. The energy of it is not. When the first page of trending videos loaded, I wanted to click away as fast as possible. Not my crowd. Like I have always said about finding the right psychic or Tarot reader… just because there is a personality mis-match doesn’t mean the other person is doing anything wrong. But ego and the bank account over rode the street smarts. I thought the “young” demo there maybe “needed” something a little more spiritual to go with the sea of selfies and narcissism. So much for TaoCraft’s “fierce authenticity,” right? I really don’t think that crowd is a good match for personal growth and spirituality. I work next level. The energy every time I opened the app is that they are still operating at the Miss Cleo stage razzle dazzle predict-my-future-so-I-don’t-have-to-think-about-it-fix-me level of Tarot. Not my gig. Still, in the spirit of giving it a fair chance, did the cards every day except the holiday to see what would happen.

What happened was the cards give me a little reminder to be authentic, and trust my gut the energy on the website for the luvva….

(insert spirit guide eye rolling here)

So what have I learned from this little experience?

Tik Tok was not a good idea, but I did the right thing keeping post comments closed and protecting the blog/website from trolling. Web sites are sites. They are places in cyberspace that carry energy and intention just as much as any room in meatspace. It is a mistake to ignore that energy. It may not be a mistake to try, but it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the vibe. This is the time and place for fierce authenticity, remember? I fully realize that I am about the next level personal growth kind of Tarot readings. I am no longer willing to compromise quality in pursuit of quantity. I need clients, always. They will come in time, with process. Don’t forget to trust the processes of authenticity, just as you trust the processes of intuition that brought you to authenticity in the first place.

Even when you are crashing around mindlessly caught up in the nuts and bolts of life….like trying to run a successful service and artistic business…the right spirit message will eventually land in your lap. The trick is being willing to listen to it when it does.

All of that being said, see how the symbolism, words, images all lead to practical, usuable language? That is what I do for clients. I translate the cards into real world advice. In this case it isn’t about predicting how my business will do, or predicting if Tik Toc will be a good source of clients. In this case it is about personal growth advice: Get off Tik Tok and be true to yourself.

There is another layer of message here….it reminds me of the message I get time and time and time again in relationship readings. This too shows the wisdom of don’t chase, attract. Be a magnet, not a search and destroy mission.  Be happy here and now, and the rest will come. Be happy and the right people will come into your life. Like attracts like. I want clients that want my style of reading. So I have to be true to my style of reading. A prediction of how many clients I’ll get won’t do a thing for me. But by steering me away from Tik Tok, I can make new choices. I don’t know how many new clients I’ll get, but I’ll be a LOT happier along the way. I’ve chosen my path and built a better future, even if it is different from the original intention or expectation of getting more clients with the Tik Tok feed. See how that works? That is exactly what my readings for clients are like too….not predictions, but a translation of spirit into usable, practical advice-sentences. Not everyone is ready for that kind of thinking. Not everyone is ready to let go of old hurts, to heal and to grow. But for those who are, I’m hear to help….not over there posting on the selfie-palooza app.

Justice reversed, Three of Swords, Five of Cups, Six of Wands, King of Cups make sentences suspended in time; You are doing something boneheaded, so just stop. Use your street smarts. Let it go. Be at peace with your true self, and the rest will fall into place. Guidance will always come – whether you know you need it or not.