Tag: intuition

Go all Hamilton all over it

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

Today’s card is the Ace of Pentacles.

The energy here is hopeful and optimistic. It feels like the odds are definitely in your favor today.

It also reminds me of the often quoted, perhaps over quoted bit of wisdom from Wayne Gretsky that “you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.” Which in a way begs the question of why. Why would you not take the shots life presents to you? Why wouldn’t you go all Alexander Hamilton all over it and, to paraphrase Lin Manuel Miranda, go boat on fire into the room where it happens and refuse to waste your shot.

Fear is a good thing.

I’ve done this. Maybe you have too. An opportunity comes along and a bucket of ice water tips over in your gut and suddenly you don’t want to take that shot so much after all. It is a weird experience to want some for a long time and be on the verge of getting it, then instead getting a sudden burst of fear. Sometimes that’s ok. Fear keeps us out of stupid dangerous situations. I’ve bailed out of opportunities, regretted being a big chicken, and later was very glad that the sudden burst of unexplained intuitive fear saved me from my own stupid self.

Impulsive, mercurial actions are more closely aligned with the element of air, and so the suit of swords. The pentacles are associated the element earth. Pentacles remind us of being grounded, solid, balanced and practical. The Ace of Pentacles gives a feeling of reassurance – it encourages us to go all Hamilton over the opportunities that come along today or the near future as long as there is no real-world logical reason to give it a hard pass. The Ace of Pentacles gives us the green light to move forward with new opportunities but also reminds us not to abandon practical matters in the process. If ice buckets are there, if you are feeling uncertain or suddenly afraid of success, listen to that. Sometimes when things are moving fast your gut works faster than your brain. But all things being equal, all things being logically safe, all things being intuitively clear, when the Ace of Pentacles shows up then take your shot on goal with confidence.

Thank you for listening, reading and watching.

The blogcast and its companion YouTube channel are not monetized and depend on audience support through “by me a coffee donations, Tarot Table memberships, and email Tarot readings purchased through this website. Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated. Thank you for your support.

Just a reminder that social media will be more random and quite than usual through mid-March. In-person individual readings return in April, details on the website (links are in the description for podcast listeners) Also, in 2022, all proceeds from sale of my ebook PeaceTarot in the TaoCraft Tarot ki-fi shop will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

See you at the next sip!

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Circles of Life and Fortune

You choose the Tarot card. Pause the video or blogcast if you need some time. Then restart to see or hear the reveal and get your Tarot reading

Today’s YouChoose works the same as always: pick a card. You choose the card, you choose how to apply it. Pause the video if you want a minute to think about which card you want, then restart to see the reveal and hear the card interpretation.

To keep the reveal a surprise (because I know you have good instincts and will pick the right card for you) the video will stand alone without a transcript so there is no peeking.

Stay tuned for more short sip Tarot reading posts and an update about Spring ’22 hours.

Thanks for watching!

Comments and questions are moderated but welcome below. Select replies post in the blog.

Focus!

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today the Seven of Cups and how to make a close decision.

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Why don’t you follow the blog or the podcast so we can sip our way to a whole coffee break?

Today’s card is the Seven of Cups.

Please don’t take offense when I yell focus. Believe me, that’s as much my message today as anyone’s. I’m definitely in coffee and nap mode this lovely chilly snowy winter morning.

But that is what weather like this is for. The card is a little more interesting and complex than that. This card is typically associated with many choices, over thinking and indecision.

In a way, indecision is a privilege. Deciding is easy if you have limited resources and few or no viable options. It’s easy to choose when you have no choice. Indecision because of many good options isn’t a bad problem to have.

Still, decision paralysis as it is called is a problem to be solved. Logic is always a good tool for that. Focus comes in handy because if you can focus and clarify your real need or your real goal, then the choices neccessary to move toward your goal often will become clear. It has a little bit of a “dominoes falling” feel here. Once you have a clear idea, the process to bring that idea to fruition will often fall into place. Or, at least, that kind of focus starts other processes like making a pro and con list to help sort through your choices.

If logic fails, and you find yourself with a “six of one, half dozen of the other” sort of decision to make, then pick up your intuition as your other decision making tool. It seems to me that is the more common advice when it comes to the seven of cups. Cups in general are associated with water, emotions and intuition. Cups cards advise us to follow our heart while swords cards often tell us to use our head.

Sometimes intuition can leave you in that six of one half dozen of the other lurch, too. That’s where Tarot or other intuition helpers come into play.

When things are logically equal, and there are only two top-tier options, and things are coming down to one of those follow your gut kind of decisions, I find the yes/no three card Tarot layout is helpful. It can validate your gut instinct as well as nudge you one direction or the other if you are feeling truly indecisive.

Stay tuned (did I mention that if you follow the blog you get all of my free Tarot content right here, and all the new posts are delivered fresh right to your inbox?) I’ve done this several times recently but MY instinct this morning is to post another yes/no example soon.

When the Seven of Cups crosses your path, it is a hint that you are going in circles and overthinking. It’s time to focus. First, use logic to sort and prioritize. If that doesn’t work, follow your gut and your heart or any other internal organs that might have something to say. If that doesn’t work, see if a divination tool or intuition helper like Tarot gives you a nudge or a validation.

If that doesn’t work, take a nap.

Just don’t forget to focus and try again when you wake up.

Thanks for reading, watching and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. I always appreciate your support. See you at the next sip!

Sunday Tarot Turnover: Go With What You Know

In this blog exclusive intuition building exercise – you do the card reading. A card is drawn at random, then I’ll give you a list of meanings from past readings that I’ve done. Use your own instincts to guide you to the best meaning or interpretation for you today. Feel free to search this blog or the original Tarotbytes archive for old posts related to the card for more intuition prompts and interpretation ideas.

  • Study, taking classes, formal education of any kind
  • new certifications to advance your career
  • informal learn – any new skill or hobby
  • learning personal growth or self development
  • learn how to ground, center, relax
  • review or revisit old knowledge as if it were for the first time

Sunday Turnovers: Clarity

Sunday Short Tarot Turnovers are a blog-only intuition exercise for you where we turn a Tarot Reading on its head. Instead of YouChoose – ing a card, I choose the card and you interpret it. There aren’t any trick, tips or how-to.

My martial arts teacher always says that the best way to train for a thing is to do a thing. That is exactly the kind of routine low-pressure practice that will help you be able to read well when the emotional heat is on.

This is easy. Just read through the list of meanings and see if and how any of them speak to you or guide you….or make up a meaning of your own just for you, just for today. This is an exercise in following your own intuition. If no meaning jumps out as the right one, just ponder the card every now and then and see if anything comes to you as the day goes on. That’s the kind of “daily meditation” Tarot that my ebook PeaceTarot teaches you to do. (It’s inexpensive and available right now as a pdf download in the ko-fi shop.)

Today’s card is the Five of Swords

  • Gain clarity. Make sure you are understanding clearly before you act
  • Self-defeat, self-sabotage
  • feeling defeated, feeling attacked
  • victory, but at great cost
  • stubbornness, it’s time to change or adapt

Even though the podcast is shifting to the short form daily meditation format, I’ll still do “confessional” or Q&A episode occasionally. YOUR QUESTIONS ARE WELCOME in the comments or by email.

Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow the blog, that way all of the free TaoCraft Tarot content will come to your inbox – short sip tarot, video demonstrations, YouChoose Interactive Tarot, announcements…all of it.

For an extra reading every month, the Reading Room membership is available through ko-fi. For $5 per month you get a three card members only three card pathway reading through the ko-fi blog, newsletter, random special offers and giveaways and a personal, just-for-you “Year Ahead” Tarot reading by email when you join.

Tips to the virtual coffee mug support this blog and the Short Sip podcast

Sunday Turnover: Two of Swords

Blog exclusive:

For “Sunday Turnover” we turn the reading process around a little. Instead of picking the card that is right for you, as with the YouChoose interactive readings, this time I choose that card and you choose the meaning that most resonates with you.

Today’s card: Two of Swords

Classically it symbolizes a logical indecision, being “of two minds about something. I personally like Diane Morgan’s interpretation of “mystical unity.” The two, while it is related to balance, it also hints at dichotomy. Many cards, like the eight of swords or the seven of cups sometimes suggest using intuition and following your heart when logic and reason fail. The same is true here, especially on cards that follow Pamela Smith’s depiction of a blindfolded figure. The blindfold suggest a reliance on internal insight, intuition, the mysterious or divine. Either way, the two of swords suggests a need for decision, a way to decide, and an element of trust.

Key ideas for the Two of Swords :

  • Indecision, of two minds
  • Reliance on intuition and the mysterious
  • Mystical unity, connection to the esoteric as much as the physical
  • Discord between heart and mind
  • Time to decide – at a standstill because of indecision
  • Conflicting ideas
  • Proper use of power (Ted Andrews)

As with the images on the cards, the trick in Tarot’s benefit is to apply it, not just memorize it.

The card showing in a reading validates any feelings of indecision that brought you to the reading. It can spur you to mental action in letting you know that it is time to decide, not to put it off. If logic doesn’t provide answers right now, look to intuition and vice versa

Sip of Tarot: Flow by Moonlight

Change is afoot. Everything ebbs and flows like the tides. The moon reminds us to use our intuition to sense those cycles and flow with them. You can’t fight the whole ocean alone. Flow with the energy, allow yourself to sense it, and you are not alone. The whole of the ocean and the whole of the cosmos is with you.

It’s not forever. Good times will come again and again like waves on the shore.

Confession #6: I’m Lazy

Transcript:

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: I’m a lazy, lazy psychic

This is a question that crossed my path out in meatspace, you know, in real life as the kids call it. They wanted to know if I keep anyone in mind when I do one card meditation readings on the blog

The lazy answer is no. 

And yes. 

When I do readings for the blog, youtube or social media, I don’t think of any ONE person in particular but I do try to keep everyone in mind. 

Don’t try this at home kids. It really is as vague and confusing as it sounds.

Energetically speaking, it is a TON easier to do a big, complex layout with 5 or 7 or 10 cards  for one specific person than it is to do a quick single card meditation reading for basically the whole internet. 

That’s why I’ve been asking all of you to please please please submit your questions. It is SO MUCH easier to connect with all of you when we all have a shared question or topic in mind. 

It really doesn’t take much to make a long distance connection like that. I’ve done email Tarot readings for clients in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea which is about as far away as it gets from the eastern united states. The part where you ask your question or give permission for an open reading is pretty much all it takes. Once you have that. Tiny spark of a connection, it dorsn’t matter whether we are using one card or a dozen, working across a table or across time zones, talking to one person or an entire internet audience.

That’s one reason why I am always EXTREMELY grateful when people let me share their questions with all of you like this. That one little bit of focus makes this whole blog and pod thing so much easier. 

Aaaand as we have established – I’m lazy.

But no, MOST of the time I don’t have any one person or one question in mind when I do my “Today’s Tarot” posts, although I really enjoy it when I can. 

At the same time, the whole *point* of doing a general audience reading IS to think of everyone and not just one person or question. I start each blog or youtube reading with the intention that the card will help the most people possible. 

I don’t get a lot of feedback about these things, so I never know how well that plan works out. Even if my starting intention is to appeal to a lot of people, if a post or a video or a podcast helps just ONE person, then it was still worth it.

The public nature of all of this is another reason why I’m so grateful when people share their questions. Some people are understandably shy about asking questions in a public venue like this. I mean, why WOULD any rational person trust some rando stranger on the internet with an important or emotionally charged question?

So the casual, off hand question that YOU ask might turn out to be a big help to someone else out there in cyberspace.

If that’s all there was to it, doing an internet reading with the vague hope that it might resonate with somebody would be easy enough, BUT when you work with subtle energies, other subtle things can mess with the process. 

Just like out in meatspace, cyberspace is … a space. 

You know how in the real world a place or a room can carry a vibe? 

Being outside in a forest FEELS different from being alone in a basement or overhearing an argument on the bus or being at a party with friends. The same is true in cyberspace. In my experience, websites and social media feeds have an energy to them too. 

Energy is everywhere and intuition absolutely works at a distance. In most ways, doing readings in cyberspace is *exactly* like doing readings in real space. I think it is possible to set the tone and atmosphere in a website…or a podcast… just like you can decorate a room in the real world. Doing email Tarot readings or writing for the blog is as comfortable as sitting in my favorite chair with a cup of coffee . Reading on youtube is kind of like working at a fortune teller booth at a festival. Some places  like snapchat and tictok are just not right for this kind of energy work. 

When the idea for Clairvoyant Confessional came along, I imagined doing readings or answering questions here would be like a  conversation among friends over a cup of coffee by a fireplace.  I want the tone for the podcast to be calming and comfortable. I want it to FEEL like a relaxed space where you can feel safe asking questions 

OR … you can just sit back and listen to me monologing like like some kind of comic book supervillian.

Either way, I hope that this podcast is a little bit entertaining or a little bit helpful for someone somewhere out there. If you DO have a question, any question, send it to me using the contact info in the episode description. I’ll do my best to give you an answer and I might even use an on air Tarot reading to do it.

The outro music that you hear is “Dimension” by the Pittsburgh band Dinosoul. Copyright Donny Donovan and Carolyn Hilliard, all rights are reserved, used here with permission. Please support local artists and musicians wherever you are.

Thank you so much for listening! I’ll see you on the print side and talk to you next time in the clairvoyant’s confessional.

Clairvoyant Confessional podcast is also available on Anchor Fm, Stitcher, Google podcasts, pocketcast and more.

PLEASE…consider this your slow rolling AMA…ask me anything. Bonus points if it about Tarot, intuition, clairvoyance, and such. Use the handy contact form below OR email ClairvoyantConfessional@gmail.com

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Kittenwiskers: Coach Jose strikes again

This!

The same can be said of intuition. ‘Psychic gifts’ are something we all have. We are all special as coach Jose said in the video. We each have unique sets of experiences and unique sets of connected learned skills. Psychics gifts are less gifts and more a unique combination of skills, perspectives and experiences. Like Coach has a unique set of experiences that give him deep understanding of the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of mindfulness, a “gifted” psychic has a unique set of skills and experiences that lets them take the intuition, imagination, abstract insights and nonverbal understanding that we all possess and put it in to a useful, beneficial format.

That’s why, as I see it, there is no place for ‘accurate predictions’ and pronouncements from on high in authentic intuitive work. Tarot isn’t meant to tell you what will happen in life. Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.

Thanks to Coach Jose for allowing me to share this with you.

In the spirit of fair disclosure: My husband has studied Chinese martial arts with and alongside of him (see also dctaichi.com) and I’ve taken martial arts workshops from Coach Jose (*heart* silk reeling qi gong and dragon fan.) We’ve already talked about what a talented musician he is. (see also me fangirling his song “Side Street of Dreams”) I consider him a friend.

@coachjosejohnson is on instagram and josejohnson.com

“Kitten Whiskers” is a series of blog post that are nothing but off-topic random fangirling about some of my favorite things. Before you ask, no, none of the was sponsored or paid for in any way. The things in these posts simply bring a little joy or spark a little aspirational badassery for me. I hope you are as delighted with them I am.

TaoCraft Tunes playlist on Spotify featuring “Side Street of Dreams” by Jose Johnson: HERE

Hauling the edges back in

Sometimes a line from a movie lodges in my brain and sort of lives there for a while until it proves to be real-life useful idea. I use them here in the blog all of the time: “Work the problem” from Apollo 13, Curly’s “one thing” from City Slickers, and now one from The Right Stuff.

I don’t even remember this one exactly. Writing a blog and professional Tarot was over a decade away and not at all on my radar when I first watched the movie and heard the line. I think it was Pancho, in the bar scene where Chuck Yeager had his cameo, but she said something about test pilots “pushing the edges of the envelope and hauling them back in again.”

Everybody seems to love the first part. We’ve all heard about “pushing the edge of the envelope” since the movie was released way back in 1983. Nobody seems to remember the “haul it back in” part. It’s just as important. If you have all intense bright light you can’t see any more than you can in pitch dark. Or as somebody said, “any landing you walk away from is a good one.” You can’t walk away from a landing if you don’t have one. As laudable as “pushing the envelope” may be, the things you learn at the edge serves no purpose if you don’t bring them home to use.

The 4 of pentacles has a reputation for meaning miserliness or greed. Or it can be a reminder to be careful with the budget. I’ve seen it interpreted as a protected, hoarded or very secret treasure that isn’t shared. Today is one of those days where the card is hinting at a bigger message, a half-bubble off of the strings of keywords attached to the card. This is one of those days where a purely intuitive connotation steps to the front. Pay attention to those whenever you do a reading. Energy and spirit really have something to say when that happens.

Be yin. Today is a day for hauling the edge of the envelope back in. It isn’t a day for pushing or striving or extravagance either literally with money or spiritually or emotionally.

It is a good day to rest and abide, and integrate, and learn how to live and use the things you’ve learned. It’s a little like the spiritual equivalent of putting away the groceries you’ve brought home. It’s time to put your spiritual learning into it’s real world place and start using them. There is a careful deliberate feel about it. Protect your spiritual treasures by solidifying them, living them. It’s a good day to turn off the afterburners and bring this Monday in for a landing.

“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.” – Chuck Yeager