ghost – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Choose Your Own Tarot: Contemplate the Upside Down

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Pause the video.

Take a deep breath and relax. Think about a question for the cards or think about your week ahead. Follow your first impulse and choose a card.

Restart the video to see your card and get the reading below:

The World (reversed)

I don’t always read a lot into reversed cards. If you think about it, it is right side up for someone sitting across from you. It’s a perspective thing. Reversed cards always ask for a little extra thought about context and perspective. Sometimes it can be a cue that a particular energy or topic or part of life is turbulent or blocked. Sometimes the context is this deck is printed on very glossy cardstock and chucks out reversals all of the time that don’t necessarily carry meaning.

In this case, the reversal is, intuitively, screaming for attention. It means something. The world is a major arcana card so it is a cue to high energies, key messages, possibly life lessons close around you.

The World is the final card in the major arcana suit. It has connections to completion, success, wholeness. It is also connected to connection…everything touches everything, and every part in a way contains the whole, touches the whole, hologram style. The card is pointing to this gestalt, holistic thinking today.

I’m not usually a heavy metal music fan, but thanks to family members I’ve heard some and “The Future is a Foreign Land” by Ghost, especially the part with the lyrics “when it all burns down.”

What do you do when your world has been turned inside out and upside down? What do you do when the person you thought was the one person who would be there for you when it all burns down is the one lighting the match?

Time may seem desperate, but when you get to the end of the major arcana then you go back to the Fool card and begin again, heartbreak and all.

Four of Cups

The pouring cup gets all of the attention here.

This is why I love the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. Sometimes it is profound. Sometimes it makes you feel “wut?”

That disconnected, ‘it’s just not resonating’ feeling is an element of the message today. The baseball imagery just isn’t getting it for me today…but that’s the message. It’s not about me.

And your concern may not be about you.

To be psychological about it, this is about intention and control. Despite our best intentions, we can’t control other people. You could pour a tanker truck of love and energy out but you can’t make someone feel any certain way. As the old proverb says: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.

Cups cards are about emotions. Regardless of the response, to love is the victory. To love is the means and the ends and all that matters. Pour your cup of love, hopefully it will water the roots of a tree rather than wet the feet of a statue.

Thank you so much for watching and reading.

I wish you all a deep drink of love and wholeness.

See you at the next sip!

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

Learn With Me: Lenormand, Standing Ovation

Well done, Healing Light Lenormand Tarot!

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“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter” – Yoda

Well done, Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler. Well done.

Gender doesn’t matter one tiny bit in a romance reading. I’ve been doing this Tarot thing for a LOT of years. I lost count how many readings I’ve done for the public decades ago.

One thing hasn’t changed in all of those years.

We don’t look like us. Gender, clothing, hair color, eye color…all of it. It’s all like a video game skin or your favorite bitmoji. Whenever I get a sense of another person lending their energy to a reading (a rare but beautiful thing) they don’t show physical form. They are blobs of light, just like the dead people in the movie Ghost.

Yoda was right.

Luminous beings are we.

Tarot itself has been around for a hot minute. So much so that it is still wrapped in arcane ideas and assumptions, like my personal nemesis, the highly christianized iconography in early decks including the RWS and many of its derivatives.

Some decks change the page to princess in some attempt at gender equality, but the deck largely adheres to a gender binary: king/queen, emperor/empress, high priest (pope, hierophant)/ high priestess. Fortunately the vast majority of the deck is neutral pips, numbers, objects and abstract ideas.

Lenormand is similar in that number 28 and 29 “The Gentleman” and “The Lady” respectively are the only gendered human figures. With the exception of the easily gender neutral “Rider” (courier) the remainder of the deck is non-human, non-gendered animals and objects.

Most of the time, The Lady and The Gentleman by and large seem to be significators, stand-ins for the person getting the reading. If I’m understanding it correctly, you just swap out the card in the layout to suit the gender identity of the read-ee (be it yourself, a querent, a sitter, a client, or whatever term you use for the person getting the Tarot reading.)

Other times, the guidebook hints at these cards can be general archetypes, like yin or yang, anima or animus, the divine feminine or the divine masculine.

However, when these cards are paired with the stars card, it can hint at that special someone or a spouse / life partner. In a larger layout, it is possible to have both a significator card and a romantic interest card. This deck gives duplicate cards so the cards can accomodate the gender identities of both, even in same sex instances.

Bravo, Christopher Butler! Bravo!

Today, we have the male presenting silhouette of “The Lady” Card paired with the Crossroads card.

My first impulse was a roaring, protective EFF the establishment! Be your true self!

The crossroads piece of it is self-evident. Purely about decisions, choices – and important ones at that. It feels like it is about choosing a life direction.

The advice seems to be, that if you have a choice you are pondering right now, consider this-

What choice would you make as your truest self? What choice would you make if, in a perfect world, you could have things turn out any way you want? What choice would you make if you were completely unhindered and had absolutely zero f*cks to give?

What is stopping you from doing exactly that?

Be safe, friends, always. But be your true self whenever you can because that true self is a beautiful, wonderful, luminous being.

Next up: Free-for-all Friday. Those posts are pure in the moment who-knows-what.

See you at the next sip!

When a Sinkhole Stops Life’s Tour Bus

The Hanged Man, an ode to the Pittsburgh Pothole Bus

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You got to love Pittsburgh.

Where else does a sinkhole + a bus = a holiday ornament?

It’s been a heckuva four years since the sinkhole swallowed the bus. This October feels tame by comparison. But that’s OK – I’ll take it.

The Hanged Man card has been turning up a lot lately in a variety of contexts, both in private and collective energy readings. That kind of repetition is usually a good clue that there is a bigger, longer-lasting wave of energy trying to make itself heard.

There are a few different things that might be going on, but that’s typical for a major arcana card to have several threads of possible meaning. The best known meaning for the card is being stuck or stagnant. Sometimes it is about needing a change in perspective. Some authors connect the Hanged Man card with self-sacrifice. I haven’t seen that. If the Hanged Man has any not-the-usual vibes it is more like a caution about self-sabotage, that “you are shooting yourself in the foot” rather than a heroic sacrifice or advice to “take one for the team”

In this case, it might just be pure inertia. Newton’s first law says that something that is still will stay still until something else makes it move. Something that is moving will keep moving in the same direction until something else makes it move in a different direction.

Life has been moving in some odd directions since the bus thing. When the pothole happened, there was no known coronavirus in humans yet. Wrap your head around THAT. We’ve been craving quiet. We’ve been craving normal. We will never have the old normal back, but the pace has slowed down a bit and it seems relatively quiet. Slow might feel stuck or stopped in comparison to recent chaos. A speeding locomotive takes a long distance and a long time to slow down. My hunch is that we are all feeling the change in speed, but in the opposite direction from recent years. We are in a different place and can’t go back, but things aren’t moving forward as screaming fast as before, either.

It’s the ghost tour time of year too.

Have you ever been on a walking tour or a bus tour and the group stopped someplace of particular interest so that people could take pictures or spend a little extra time appreciating the featured thing? I get the feeling there is a little bit of that going on here too.

If life stops your tour bus, it’s because there is something that needs your attention.

If you are in traffic and all of a sudden your back wheels are stuck in a big hole, look around. What have you been zooming by and not seeing?

That trope applies to any repeating card. It’s boilerplate – if a card or a life experience (or both) keeps repeating, then there is something important that we are missing, some important lesson that we just aren’t learning.

If the Hanged Man comes to your reading or you are just feeling stuck the stuck part may not be the message. The message may be to slow down, stop and take a look. It may just be life tapping you on the shoulder reminding you to do the pocket pat down and check for your phone, wallet and keys and anything else important you might be missing.

Thank you for reading!

Email readings are OPEN all through the holidays. Zombie cat is doing free yes/no readings in the blog through October 31, 2023 if you leave a question in the comments.

Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC used with permission.

Bus meme via imgur, bus image found via nbc news

Whose Expectation Is It?

TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Hanged Man from the major arcana portion of the Tarot Deck.

Major arcana cards are about the major life lessons, about the twists and turns life can take. Sometimes they are guidance for a big choice you have to make, but in this case, it can be more along the lines of a general wake up call. That’s the kind of energy around today.

There was an episode of TV show we used to watch where the mom of the family was YouTube famous for a few days because of a video of her yelling “knock it off!” at her kids. She was the “knock it off” lady.

That’s the vibe the Hanged Man has today. Major arcana cards can be just that blunt and to the point sometimes. They are most often the cards to give the frying pan over the head kind of messages. I always enjoy it when Tarot drops the diplomacy and tells it like it is.

To borrow from another bit of pop culture, this kind of vibe is a little like the scene in the 1990 movie Ghost where the ghost, speaking through a psychic, asks psychic Oda Mae to be tactful and gentle when she talks to the bereaved character Molly. So of course, she gently and famously says “Molly, you in danger, girl.”

This card isn’t telling you that you are in danger, but it is telling you to knock it off.

If you think that life is stuck and not making any progress, whose expectations are being frustrated? Neil DeGrasse Tyson said that “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” Even more so, the universe is under no obligation to operate according to your timeline. The major arcana cards specialize in difficult life lessons. “It’s not about you” is one of those lessons.

So if you are feeling stuck or frustrated, the Hanged Man’s gentle, diplomatic advice is to KNOCK IT OFF! The universe is under no obligation to work according to your calendar.

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See you at the next sip!

Ghost of Zombie Cat

First published 17 May 2015

“There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies” – William Shakespeare

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost” – Ghostbusters

In the first Zombie Cat post we talked a little bit about the intersection of Tarot and science. Now lets shift gears yet again and add in the spiritual, fringe, and frankly, “woo-woo” aspect of things. Tarot intersects all of those, too.

When I’m not looking at the world as a giant Taoist Taijitu (yin/yang symbol) I tend to see a lot of things in terms of a Venn diagram. That’s why I chose a triquetra as the main symbol in my old Modern Oracle logo. This “trinity knot” is essentially an excerpt of a three circle Venn diagram which in turn symbolizes much in my work…mind/body/spirit (for holistic health) or mother/maiden/crone (for the stages of life) or sea/sky/land (our connection with Nature) and many more such groups of three. I see Tarot as overlapping with self, science and spirituality, again giving us that lovely triquetra shape.

So, back to Tarot and spirituality. Any good thesis defines its terms. In this case we have to define spirituality. I’ve noticed a tendency for people to use spirituality and religion almost interchangeably. They aren’t. As I see it, they are totally different, damn near opposite things. I define spirituality as internal and individual. Spirituality is how we as individuals engage with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and our existence within it. Religion, on the other hand, is external, codified, ritualized, other, outside of our individual self. Religion is how a collective of people over time has engaged with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and pronounced them to be. We express our spirituality in out external lives. Spirituality goes from the inside out. Religion structures our external lives as a way to instruct the internal. Religion is outside in. Tarot is intuition – it is inside to inside. It has everything to do with spirituality, nothing to do with religion.

Spirituality is unlimited. It is in this vast inner world where Tarot applies and finds its usefulness. Yes, the cards are external. But they don’t instruct our inner world from the outside in as a religious practice might. They are a mirror to reflect out inner world back to us and lens to help us understand what we see there. They reflect and shine light in the dark corners, allowing that inner world of spirituality to illuminate and expand, grow and thrive.

The cards are nothing more than just pieces of paper. It is centuries of projected wisdom and symbolism written on the cards combined with the intuition and insight of the Tarot reader’s living modern mind that leads the way to enlightenment…not the pieces of paper alone. The cards are the Venn diagram intersection of mind and matter that lets us catch glimpses of the possibilities and probabilities afforded to us by the physical/quantum universe of which we are an intimate and inseparable part.

Tarot cards are our portal into the trinity of humanity, science and spirituality. They are a magnet that draws wisdom, guidance, insight and empowerment out of a melange of known, unknown, explicable, inexplicable, and the heart that seeks to know more.

There is more in heaven and earth than we have yet to dream and discover. There is more inside ourselves as well. There is more than just a dead or living cat in Schrodinger’s box. Woo-woo as they may seem, disappearing cats and zombie cats are part of the bigger multiverse of the human heart, mind, imagination and spirit.

Zombie Cat is in the house! Yes-or-No Tarot is now available to order on the home page. These 3 card Tarot readings answer any ONE yes-or-no question. Fun, lighthearted and tongue in what’s left of his cheek, Zombie Cat’s readings are 100% guaranteed to have words in them and a 50% chance of being dead wrong. Order HERE.