What the actual….

Whelp. I guess that tornadoes fading image hasn’t started to fade yet. So what say you my sensitives? What is your read on the funky mojo energy here in the U.S. after yesterday’s armed insurrection at the capital and continuing political frakus? Both logic and intuition say this is it – buckle up for the end game. THEN we can crawl out of the wreakage, survey the damage and begin the beginning of the very early phases of clean up.

I can’t think of a card that captures any meaning or guidance for anything like this, except maybe…

Top image via bitmoji free app, Devil card image from the public domain

YouChoose Interactive Tarot 25 July – 1Aug. 2020

Take your week, and the Tarot guidance for it into your own hands. Pick a card, right, center or left. Take your time, pause the video then restart for the reveal…or pick which ever card feels right on an impulse. Both ways work just fine.

Left: Seven of Swords. Mischief is afoot. Stay on your toes. Watch out for pranks, be kind to unintended mistakes

Center: The Magician. Create your world. Like attracts like. A shift in perception and point of view can change the world like magic

Right: King of Pentacles. Focus on the practical. Generally, energies are turning toward the spiritual and esoteric, but this week still needs a grounded and practical approach. Don’t let your head get stuck in the clouds.

Today’s Tarot: Seven Coins and One Hundred Thank Yous

THANK YOU each and every one. No matter if you are seeing this directly from your YouTube subscription or if you are on the blog or social media – thank you. As you can tell, (insert Star Trek Dr. McCoy voice) dammit Jim,  I’m a writer not a YouTuber. I really didn’t know what to expect when I started the channel. Triple digits are both a surprise and a priveledge. I’ll do all I can to make the channel and blog only get better from here.

I appreciate all of you who have taken the time to comment on YouTube. I’ll reply individually in time (once I get my almost boomer brain around how to do that effeciently) But yes, you are absolutely right. These videos ARE short – for a reason. They were always intended to be a starting point. I hope you’ll follow the description link to get the full written reading. There are plenty of speech to camera talking head Tarot videos out there. I want this to be about the cards and the *intuitive process*. Intuition and mental processes don’t make for exciting video.

And yes, I’ll be making videos of actual readings on a variety of topics, career included. Comments on the website are closed, but you are welcome to use the feedback page or email to send any questions, comments suggestions or topics you would like to see covered both on the YouTube channel and in the blog.

But now back to the reason we are all here…

Seven of Pentacles: Give stuff time and space to grow. Tarot evolved in medieval Europe, even if it was initially just a game. Even if it didn’t make the jump from game to fortune telling device or spiritual practice until the eighteenth or nineteenth century, the culture was still more agrarian than industrial. That would explain why this card is so rooted in gardening images and metaphores. You reap what you sow – literally. It is both warning and a promise.  If you plant artichokes, you are going to get artichokes, not a field of daisies. It is a warning that if you throwdown bad stuff, bad stuff will come right back at you, in some form or another. It is a promise, that if you put in the effort, that if you plant seeds there will indeed be a harvest, in one form or another.  Warning and promise take time. To get the good stuff, you have to put in the work, invest good things, and let nature take its course a little bit, but nature promises some sort of return, symbolically speaking. Sure, real life farming can take disasterous turns that are no fault of the farmer. Metaphorically speaking: nature gives back, always, sooner or later. What nature gives is in many ways up to you, what you do, and how you perceive the result.  A tomato may not be picture-perfect, but still taste delicious.

Today’s Tarot: Be The Stability

 

“Be the change you want to see in the world” – Ghandi

So far, 2020 has been a helluva decade. 

We are all awash in change. If you look at Tarot as being predictive, then this is good news, an omen of increased stability on the horizon.

Nope.

I don’t see it that way in general principle or in this particular card on this particular day. In fact, if I listen with intuition to the general, zeitgeist, energy-at-large feelings then it feels opposite, well, actually kind of sideways from a return to stability or any sort of prior normalcy. It doesn’t feel like a hopeful, optimistic sunrise or a gentle stable reliability of the returning sun as is usually the connotation with this card. At the same time it isn’t a sense of decent into interminable darkness, either. 

The feeling is more akin to “Brace yourself for part 2. It’s gonna be a doozy.” Remember that eye of the hurricane turn in the energy last week? Or was it the week before…you know, last blursday the 77th….

It feels like the eye of the hurricane is about to pass by and we are facing the other side of the eyewall. In my minds eye I see black clouds blowing sideways in a circular wind, like farm soil picked up in a tornado. The biggest difference is this time we know what is in there. We know what we are in for. The sense of optimism that was there for a tiny bubble of time when New York City reported mitigation was working and the rate of increase was slowing down. 

Now is when the storm moves from New York City and spreads like a mud flow across the nation, at it thickest where partisanship reigns and mitigation / health science does not. Not pleasant, not neutral, but that’s the image, that is the facts of it. Tarot and science are not at odds…but are rather different windows into the same human experience.

So what does all of that have to do with the Sun card you are probably asking. It’s an advice card, not a predictive one. It is time to be your own stability. In chaotic times, the change you want to see in the world is a change toward more stability. We can’t count on that coming from the outside in. Just like we can rely on the outside world or other people for our happiness, we have to be our own stability right now. This isn’t a time for reaching, forcing, or inspirational charging ahead. This is a time for watching, prioritizing, doing what the present moment needs, preparing, being. Just be. That we can do with great consistency and stability. If you allow yourself to be, without expectation or goal or judgement, just as the sun simply IS in the sky, then that is both enough and as reliable as the sunrise.

Consider these two things:

First, a Zen parable, author unknown – 

A student asks the master “I want to be happy. How do I do that?” The master said “First, drop the ‘I’ because that is ego. Then drop the ‘want’ because that is desire. Then all that remains is ‘be happy’.”

Second, a quote from lovely Brea Fisher, Qi Gong instructor and vlogger (please support her on Patreaon www.kwanyinkungfu.com)

“Being is a current theme right now for me and many others. Beingness sends a pulse out into the world like the beating of a drum so continuous is drone. You are enough simply by existing. You don’t need to do anything more to be worthy of this life. You are whole in this moment no matter what” – Brea Fisher

That being said, being is enough. Being is your stability. Anything else is desire and perception. You can be the stability you want in this world.

My Side of the Tarot Table: YouTube

Whenever I take a break from thinking about the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve been thinking about the YouTube channel. It is harder to transition to speaking on video than I thought it would be. To be honest, I HATE the way I’ve been sounding this past week. I’m not always like that, I swear. Co-hosting on David Dear’s Menage A Tarot podcast with he and Kate was one of the most fun things I’ve ever, ever done! The clumsiness lately is a lesson for me. It will get better, I’m sure, now that I’ve figured out the what if not the why of what’s going on. I am hugely grateful to all of you who have watched the videos for coming on this bumpy start with me.

It’s not like my goal is to be the Markiplier of YouTube Tarot world, and I have no intention of trying to compete with speech-to-camera pros like Benebel Wen or Theresa Reed. If you are looking for polished, articulate, edited, or high production values…I can’t help you there. Writing is my forte, but I had the thought that the videos would give you a taste of what a live in-person reading would be like, but that isn’t happening right now either. It’s an energy thing. Let me explain.

I can connect to energy and spirit with a keyboard as well as anyone and (in my less than humble opinion) better than most.  I can type your message from spirit to you with all the power and clarity of speaking to you face to face. Maybe more, because live sessions don’t have spell check, and grammar hints. I love to read and a writer by nature. I connect to your energy seamlessly just by reading your name and question (or permission for an open session) on a screen. It’s like turning on a light switch.

When I write blog posts like this, it isn’t with a particular person in mind, but the switch trips just the same. I send these out with the intent that whoever needs it will find and that the message helps someone somewhere. I’ve gotten enough feedback from readers over all of these years to know that it works. YouTube may not capture that, but here, now, this blog and these words, this time with you captures every bit of it.

I can connect to your energy during your live session very easily. We chat and talk a little bit at the beginning, and that brings the connection clear and bright, just like lighting a candle.

YouTube, is a different energy animal. It’s like trying to do a reading during a middle school dance in a giant gymnasium. There is a megaton of energy, lots of connections to be made and, I suspect, some folks that are interested in Tarot. Maybe YouTube isn’t the best place for me to be…that’s why I decided to not sweat it or pour a lot of editing and production effort into it. YouTube for me is instructive, it shows the mechanics of Tarot more than the message of it. It shows that each card draw is random and genuine and the real thing. Raw and down to earth is just fine. I think of the “YouChoose” videos as a hand scrawled poster board taped to the wall of the gymnasium free-for-all that lets everyone know that there are some Tarot readings over here if you are interested in one-to-one, affordable, quiet, calm, zen like time with the cards. “If you build it they will come” is a thing. It’s an intention and manifestation thing. It’s a I’m here for you thing, in all kinds of cyberspaces.

But again, thank you to everyone who reads the blog, watches the vids, and follows along with social media. You all are the BEST and you are the ones that make this kind of work worth doing.

If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback, or just want to say hi…PLEASE click HERE for the easy contact form.

Hang in there everyone. Weird times and complicated energies are afoot. We’ll get through it. If I can help by listening to the howling winds of intuition … I’m right here and will do my best for you. Y’all got this. All of you.

12 Second Tarot: The Chariot (2020-02-17)

Spirit speaks to everyone, but it whispers. The only way to hear over the crash and clatter of daily living is to pay attention and to be fully here in this present moment. That is the kind of attention the Chariot asks of us. Life moves fast. It takes deliberate mindfulness to connect with what you need to hear otherwise subtle guidance is whispers in the wind.

You Choose Tarot (14 Nov 19)

Left: Seven of Wands. Success after struggle, but only if the ground you stake, the stand you means something imortant. Your stance, your tribe, your allies show your true self.

Middle: The Star. Navigate by stars, not by clouds. Look to your spiritual north star, a philosophy that is always reliable, something that always shines in your darkest night.

Right: Eight of Pentacles. Execute. Make. Practice. Do. Plans are one thing, doing it for real is quite another. This is where things get real.

12 Second Tarot: 2 of Swords (17 September 19)

Difficult situations require that we look with our heart as much as our with our eyes.

The two of swords is often read as being “of two minds” about something….a choice between two things of such equality that it is almost impossible, or maybe pointless, to decide.

Often, though, there is a little more to it than that.

Diane Morgan gives a unique reading of the card in her book “Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao” which for all the obvious reasons is far and away one of my favorite Tarot book. She reads it as a ‘mystical unity’. Instead of indecision between two things, she saw it as profound, etheric, or sublte connection between two things. That is the energy that is stepping forward today.

Today, the two connected things are nothing less than you and the universe.

Which is just how you can decide between two things and make a difficult choice. See with your heart. Before you can make the compassionate choice, or take the higher road, you have to figure out what that is. The idealistic…or even the ideal choice isn’t always obvious. The two of swords is your permission to follow the energy, follow the spiritual choice even if it isn’t obvious to other people. You may the one seeing with more than your eyes.

Taraffirmation #2

Introducing “Taraffirmations” (almost) daily blog posts of a positive, present tense statement based on the 12 Second Tarot card of the day, intended to inspire you, empower you, and just plain add a bright spot to your day.

Subscribe to the TaoCraft Tarot YouTube channel to watch the 12 Second Tarot draw (almost) every day.