lenormand tarot – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Action Eases Anxiety Tarot: Next

I’d really like it if you follow this blog. Not just because I enjoy the thought that somebody somewhere might enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it, but also so you can see the patterns unspooling with the same timing and sequence that I see it.

First the 8 of cups kept popping up and the overall vibe those days was of turning a corner, all very much attuned to the classic meaning for the card. Think walking away from a bad situation and toward a better one with all the Bittersweet painful nostalgia mixed bag of feels that experience brings.

Then the energetic turning-a-corner feeling faded into, well fading.

Even then, the Moon was making itself known in Standing in the Shimmer and in Friday’s Weekend Oracle: Fade posts.

The Moon card is still talking to us.

This morning, I did a different card draw for today with the intention of doing a collective energy, week-ahead, action eases anxiety type of reading for today. It was The Moon, The Ring and The Mice.

Don’t ask me why or how, but I lost the draft of the short before I could edit and get it uploaded to YouTube. Whatever boneheaded thing I did, I’m taking it as a hint that the card and message was wrong for the moment and tried again even though I had already reshuffled the cards and it was half an hour later.

Hello Moon.

I can take a hint.

The Moon card means it when it shows up twice like that. After all of this time with the card, I know a good synchronicity when I see it.

Today’s cards are:

What it is (current energy): The Child.

It seems like there is always that one card in a deck where the visuals don’t quite match the vibe. That can happen with any card in any deck in any given reading, but it seems like some of them are like that more often than the others in a deck. The Four of Swords in the Witches Tarot is one example. This is another. The art screams horror movie reboot to me, but the guidebook talks about new beginnings. Combine the visual with THAT and it does give a sense of crossing a threshold into something new. This is the mysterious something just out of sight and off screen with the RWS 8 of cups we’ve talked about in earlier posts. This is what we are turning a corner to face. This is what new thing we are or can fade into.

The current energy is one of becoming.

What to DO (to ease anxiety or move forward more peacefully): The Moon

Clearly this is where the emphasis is for today’s reading. DOing can be quiet and internal. The thing to do just now IS to be quiet. Both Lenormand and RWS decks have a moon card. Both styles point to introspection and intuition. There is a big pause and reflect message here. Give yourself the inner grace if not the literal quiet. Allow the wattage to be a little lower if you just aren’t feeling it. We’ve been through some stuff and seen some things, so is ok to slow down, take inner inventory – again “pause and reflect” comes through strongly here – before we tackle the new beginning, turn the corner, walk off the edge of the card and cross the glow-y threshold to something new.

I also hear “look beyond to the new cycle” … look to what is next BEYOND the corner, beginning and threshold. Cycles and circles don’t stop. Change doesn’t stop…it just happens at different speeds. The moon gradually fades from one phase to another, while Jupiter spins in the span of a typical workday. Change might be in fade mode right now, but a new phase is beyond. It’s a new moon now, in the real world. That will fade into a full moon soon enough.

Whatever place we might be in a cycle, however fast the cycle might be moving, something is always next.

What it is is something new. What to do is give yourself some grace and time to adapt.

Action Eases Anxiety: Choose and Protect

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Reading left to right:

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.

Sage’s Second Cup Sunday

I have no idea if cross posting between blogs is a good idea or not. Nor do I give a fk at this point. That’s the whole idea of being an amateur hobbiest instead of trying to be a professional side hustle. Here goes nothin’

Clearly, this blog is going to be inspired by current events and take the place of the void screaming in my old blog Baihu’s News Haikus.

Lately I’ve been following Dan Harris. His approach to meditation very much resonates with my own (“Inner Peace Mthrfkrs!”) His posts about action easing anxiety came just when I needed to hear it in my personal life and it inspired the Tarot layout by that name. It’s true. I’ve lived it. I’ve used it. And I’ll be posting a reading later today on Sage Sips – if I get the laundry done, supper cooked and the garbage out in time. Funny how these full time jobs tend to take up so much time.

Woke up this morning to more insanity between U.S. and Iran. To those Gen X among us, did you ever in your 1079 remembering life imagine that Iran would wind up sounding almost reasonable in comparison to the White House? Am feeling the Lenormand deck. I think we can use one of it’s pull-no-punches kind of readings.

I’ve recently added a third card to the layout. The first is ‘what it is’ to show the current energy environment. The second is ‘what to do’ suggesting a helpful response to that energy, probably a shift in perception or understanding. The third is ‘how to do it’ which I hope will both support the second card and encourage us to implement it out in the real world. I think of swords cards as sort of the patron saint of this layout….air, intellect AND action.

Making an action plan can go a long, long way toward easing anxiety. But putting the plan into actual action goes that one step further. Even if the action plan goes entirely off the rails as plans so often do.

I’m such a tiny little speck of nothing when it comes to current event and US politics. All I have to offer in this situation at the moment is an internet connection and three congressmen to yell at. Online contact may not do anything, except as one tiny electron tick to some aggregate statistic. But at least I can go sleep tonight knowing I did what I could.

I encourage to send your tiny electron to your representatives, contribute whatever else you can, and above all vote. Check your registration, jump through as many of their obstructive hoops as you can and if you can’t, see if anyone can help.

In the words of TV’s firefly “When you can’t run, you crawl and when you can’t do that you find someone to carry you.” That. Only voting.

Make the midterms look like the Avengers assembling.

People were joking online about being willing to crawl over covid covered broken glass to vote against the fascists in the past couple of elections. (Hopefully it won’t come to that, but don’t give them any ideas) But the idea. Do whatever you can. It doesn’t only help the greater good, it helps you. Action eases anxiety.

Will talk to you later on the main blog. Hang in there. Wishing you some little thing that gives you a ridiculously large amount of happiness in spite of it all. Imma have a second cup of coffee.

Inevitable

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Change is inherent to life. Change is inevitable. Change is at hand.

The energy in today’s reading is entirely about world events, not an individual situation – but it tells us all something we can do ease the anxieties for all of us during war, fascism and all of the overwhelming things in the world today.

The Action Eases Anxiety layout hints at what current energies ARE and what to DO about them.

What is is: The Scythe. This symbol clearly resonates with the Death card from the RWS major arcana. The energy now is ripe for making changes. In this deck’s book, Christopher Butler adds a connotation of precision. The advice here is to make smart, precise, efficient, effective changes. Be focused and targeted in what you decide to do. Do small things that you feel confident and comfortable doing….think of a magnifying glass that focuses sunlight so strongly it could ignite paper. When you are confident and comfortable, you are focused and effective. Don’t feel comfortable calling your congressional representatives? Send an email. Don’t feel comfortable carrying a big sign to a protest? Stand quietly at the protest. Quiet presence and small but persistent action counts too.

The Death card is ‘sea change’ … any big, life altering change. Like the Death card, the change isn’t always disastrous. When I was a professional reader, I saw the death card all of the time – at bachelorette parties, and even a baby shower once. Change can be very, very good change. Sure it may be the death of the maiden phase of life, but it is also the birth of wife and mother phases of life. Symbolic death of the old is necessary to make way for the new. The Scythe card here emphasizes that aspect. The Scythe clears the way for better things to come. It clears the way for you to move forward in the way that you want, the way that you must.

Here I am reminded of the powerful quote from the movie The Last Jedi where the character Kylo Ren says “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become who you were meant to be.” That captures the feeling of the Scythe card today.

What to do: The Whip is a disturbing image, typically associated with quarreling and conflict akin to the 3 of swords or 5 of wands. This connects to the underlying “Change…but in a good way” message here. To make positive, effective changes, old patterns are necessarily disrupted. This connects to the John Lewis “good trouble” reference.

Clearly this is a time of upheaval. I intuitively ‘hear’ “sea change” along with “good trouble.”

I also ‘hear’ “we are in the thick of it” and “this the darkness before the dawn”

My mind is drawn to the number 5 and the month of May. I don’t know why or what that’s about – but I hold on to hope just the same. May is only a couple of months away.

But that should NOT draw our focus away from the moment at hand. That is exactly what the first card warns us about. Any diffusion to our focus could keep the critically needed changes from sparking.

Now is the time to add your drop into the ocean of change, now is the time to add your weight to the work of bending the arc of history toward justice.

Thank you, as always, for reading. See you at the next sip!

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My Tarot Valentine 2026

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When you love, you win. It’s the act of giving love that matters.

Love heals the deepest wounds without dwelling on them including – perhaps especially – when that love and healing is directed toward yourself.

Loving others is its own reward, no matter how others respond.

Love is a living tree. Water and tend to it, always. It will give air and fruit and color and life in return, if not in this season, then in another. Love will outlive the pain.

“The only thing stronger than hate is love” – Bad Bunny

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My Tarot Valentine is a collection of Tarot meditations with the theme of love, romance, and relationships of all kinds. 44 pages.

Action Eases Anxiety (for a snowy weekend)

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This reading can resonate with anyone, anywhere, at any time – if it feels right for you, it’s yours. The reading also feels like it is directed at those of us in the US who are forecast to (GASP!!) get a bunch of snow in the middle of January. Get your snackies, beer, stuff for sandwiches if the power goes out and ingredients for soup and cookies if it doesn’t. It’s a good excuse to stay home, and stick it to capitalism by not buying a damn thing extra all weekend. Stay safe, stay warm and be good to yourself. This is an introvert’s paradise, so extroverts are on their own for this one. Imma knit and read and putz around on the website.

This layout lends itself well to Lenormand decks. It’s like a simple sentence, subject and verb. It shows us what the energy is and suggests a good thing to do about it.

Doing something (even if that something is wait, watch or conserve) can take the edge off of worries. Just having an action plan can help, even if you don’t wind up using it.

Current energy: The Stars.

I ‘hear’ “the road to riches is close at hand but hidden” This is a good omen type of card similar to the Star card in the RWS major arcana. It speaks to good fortune at hand, but it also has elements of subtle guidance. It hints at doing the necessary mental work for find your good fortune. Look before you leap, think before you act, but in the end, actions speak louder than words. You have to take steps in order to walk the road to good fortune.

What to do: The Bear.

Protect what you have. Don’t be a spendthrift just now. As Ben Franklin said “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

The deck author, Christopher Butler describes this card as a very mama bear energy.

Don’t just stand up for what you believe in, sit with it. Share space and spend time with the things and people most important to you as far as you are able. Send your thoughts and check in with friends and loved ones if you can’t physically be there.

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See you at the next sip!

Action Eases Anxiety (9 Nov 25)

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The “Action Eases Anxiety” layout was inspired by Buddhist philosophy (I HIGHLY recommend Dan Harris’ Substack) and my “Learn With Me” series about Lenormand Tarot.

The layout is like a sentence…a noun and a verb. It represents the current energy, then what to do about it. It isn’t a prediction or a quick fix, but making an action plan like this takes the edge of worries. Any tarot reading can help us focus on the moment at hand, not what may or may not happen in the future. That in itself can help ease worry.

What it is (left card): Ace of Cups, reversed. Something is leaking or spilling. Where are your emotions being spent uselessly? Where is your creative energies being wasted? What fucks are you giving that would be better not to give, or to at least give somewhere else?

What to do (right card): Ten of Wands. Put down responsibilities that aren’t really yours. Remember that you can show the way, but you can’t walk through the door for someone else. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. Your happiness is your responsibility, no one else’s. No one can give it to you, but equally, no one can take it from you unless you give it away.

Thanks for reading and watching! See you at the next sip!

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

Action Eases Anxiety: Feel your way home

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L- what it is (cross, reversed)
R – what to do (the Lady)

Energy is flowing at cross purposes to your higher intentions. Magick moves slower, this is not a time for impulsive actions.

Feeling is both noun and verb. Feeling IS doing something. Emotions, intuition, gut instinct may sway back and forth, but like a compass needle will help you feel your way forward, like gently finding your way across a pitch-black room.

The Lady card today resonates with the sacred feminine, with the mysterious, spiritual, inward, contemplative side of human psychology that is akin to the High Priestess in other Tarot decks. That is the thing to do. By the same token, being rigid, outward, legalistic, or dogmatic (as one might expect from the Pope card) is something to be avoided in this energy environment.

Lenormand tradition does not give much weight to reversals, but in this case it seems to emphasize the message that the energies are not openly hostile but definitely moving at cross purposes to your intentions. This is not a time for new projects. This is not a time for impulsive action or rash decisions.

Think about finding your highest and best, think of acting (albeit carefully) for the highest good. This is a good week to contemplate your true calling and highest path. Find direction now, take action later when the way is more clear and the resources you need are within view and closer reach. your true calling and highest path. Find direction now, take action later when the way is more clear and the resources you need are within view and closer reach.

To put it in short but controversial terms, be loving and spiritual this week, avoid religion. Feel, more than act this week. Contemplation and kindness lead the way through this time.

Thank you so much for reading. See you at the next sip!

Action Eases Anxiety: The More You Know

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The times are vibing with the Lenormand Deck, which inspired this two card layout in the first place. My experience with Lenomand resonated with a conversation I heard on “The Circle is Pod Cast” with Matt Auryn and Rachel True. Lenormand really is concise, direct, and often very sentence-like . That in turned this short subject/verb, what it is/what to do format.

What it is: CROSS. The liminal portal-like energy from last week continues. Think of this in religious terms if you must, but this energy is like crossROADS more than connected to any one religious viewpoint. This is a time of choices. Progress demands it. Linger here and become stuck, or choose well to manifest your next path for the highest good. This is a potent time. Use it well to set intentions, plant seeds, lay foundations.

What to do: Book Symbolic of both sacred mystery and deep learning, this is a reminder that learning isn’t always about logic and knowledge. Wisdom asks to be learned as well. Learn the way of your chosen spiritual path by reading, listening, finding a mentor. King of cups Tarot card comes to mind. Spirit guide energy is nearby to help, but you must still do the work and learn to find the best way for you as an individual to be a part of this energy and flow with this powerful time.

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Week Ahead Tarot: Cleverness and Trust

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THE SNAKE: Stay quiet and camouflaged, use logic and observation to learn who you can trust – or not.

THE DOG: Someone trustworthy is near. Find them, and be as good of a friend to them as they are to you. The sum will be greater than the parts for all concerned.

If your individual intuition is the engine that drives a Tarot reading, symbolism is the steering wheel.

Like a car in Pennsylvania during pothole season, it’s very easy for that steering to get out of alignment. Symbolism is very influenced by culture and time and has to be kept in context. It has to be in alignment with the reader and the sitter and the intuitive vibe of the reading.

Take the color black, for example.

For some, black is seen as aligned with “evil.” In western traditions black has been associated with death, funerals and mourning, but also with evening elegance and fashion, men’s tuxedos for example.

In Japan, novice monks and many lay people wear black as a symbol of their dedication to practice and as a symbol of community.

The symbolism for snakes is just as varied. Sometimes they are seen as symbolizing lies or deception as in the Christian garden of Eden myth or someone being a “snake in the grass” in an old western movie.

In Chinese cultures, snakes are associated with wisdom, intelligence, charm and grace. In many places they are connected to personal growth and transformation through their ability to shed their old skin as they grow.

Dogs on the other hand, are all just good bois and gurls. How an individual person treat dogs and other small animal is the tell here more than any broad cultural reference. If a dog likes you, you must be OK. If you like dogs, there must be some kindness in your heart. Dogs symbolize great loyalty and deep friendship almost everywhere. Only after they have been through horrors do they devolve into aggression and threat.

If you chose the snake card, beware deception – use observation, cleverness and intellect to understand who to trust. Take inspiration for the snake to adapt and transform yourself.

If you chose the dog card, know others by their proven trustworthiness and kindness. Be a friend, find a friend, hold on to your friends.