life path – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Solar Eclipse Tarot Reading

Science!

Science is the best way humans have to learn about the physical world and navigate the public sphere. In the physical world and civic life reason is our ultimate guide.

Yet, the subjective inner world lies outside of science’s grasp. Psychology comes close. There are reasons that there is much overlap between the work of Carl Jung, Taoism and Tarot. Science and spirituality are two sides of humanity’s coin so to speak. Tarot can help us understand and navigate the inner, spiritual world as much as reason must guide us through the outer one.

I’m no expert.

NASA says there are 2-3 eclipses a year. There are various degrees of solar coverage, and they happen in wildly different spots all over the globe. Total eclipses are just one of several types (partial, annular etc). To have a total eclipse land in your front yard is, indeed, a once in a lifetime gift.

And that is just the global perspective.

Open the perspective to the galaxy. Or the universe. How many planets have a moon that is just the right size at just the right distance in just the right orbit for a total eclipse to happen at all – ever? Somebody like Neil DeGrasse Tyson will have to answer that for us, but I’m guessing that it is mind blowingly, achingly rare. No one knows how many planets have intelligent life. How many places do both of those things converge. How many planets in the universe have eclipses like ours AND beings who can understand and appreciate them? Even if it’s not rare, it is a beautiful, powerful experience well worthy of every bit of hype and reverence it receives.

Yes, solar eclipses are just the shadow of the moon falling on parts of the earth. Period. Our internal subjective experience of this wonder of the Cosmos is where the magic resides with all the validity of science and shadows.

@SpiralSeaTarot on Threads, who shares my preference for smaller layouts, brought up the topic of a Solar Eclipse Tarot layout. I don’t know of any existing ones offhand, but it seems like an easy one to write.

I think the energy path reading that we do here all of the time could be adapted and amped up a little to meet the occasion.

Card 1: Waning Light

This card represents issues and energies that are fading away. This is something we are strongly advised to release once and for all. This is what must happen for our transformation, for life to progress to something better. The death card has turned up frequently lately in readings I’ve done and in social media posts by other well respected readers. Eclipses are traditionally associated with transformation and change. Change energy may be both ancient and a modern collective, but that doesn’t make it any less valid or powerful. Eclipses are a portal to change and this card hints at what must change for good and for all – or at least be put on the back burner for a good long while.

Card 2: Totality

The eclipse at totality looks like a portal to another dimension. This is a moment ripe for total communion with the spiritual experience of being a conscious human at this place and this time. Of every being in the entirety of the universe, you are here, now, witnessing this beautiful, unique thing. It can be, it must be, a moment of full presence.

In this layout, this card represents your spiritual guidance in this moment. This is what the universe most wants you to know. This can represent a moment of being your most powerful and profoundly authentic self. This represents your life path and life calling in this moment. This points to your portal, your connection to your highest and best.

Card 3: Emerging Light

This is hope and optimism and the other side of your powerful transformation. This is the thing to reach for, the thing to choose, the path most open to you. As the light of the sun returns, it spotlights the place to put your hopes and energies. It spotlights the path to take and direction to go. This card lights up the way and path forward.

Here is a solar eclipse reading for the collective, but I encourage you to get or do a reading for yourself. The profoundly spiritual is the profoundly individual.

Waning Light

Stop pushing. You don’t have to be in control. You don’t have to push and strive every moment. If you are content with the way things are, you’ve already won. If you aren’t happy, maybe you are courageously pursuing the wrong things. Hold up a moment. Is all of this frenetic action serving you, or some idealized purpose? Figure out what you really want. If you have it, great, call it a day. If not…charge in that new direction. If it is the right thing, you’ll get there without all the fuss and fury.

Totality

The essence of change is a new beginning.

The death card led us here. When you change what you do, what you think, how you live, how you show the world who you are, then the old thing, the old way, the old you essentially dies to this moment. BUT time – and you- continues. Moment slips into moment, and as the old slips away, the new emerges. Alan Watts famously said that “you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” This eclipse is the perfect opportunity and excuse to make a change and let the new you make a grand entrance. Physically, in the real world, do what you need to do to be safe. For your inner world – this is your permission from the universe to begin to fearlessly be who you really are and always wanted to be. Do it! Now is the time! Let yourself be yourself, no matter how carefully you let the world in to your new beginning.

The way to your highest and best is to stop waiting, and simply begin.

Things don’t have to be perfect immediately, but they can never progress if you don’t start to move. They say it is the journey that matters, not the destination. For there to be a journey at all, you must take your first step.

Emerging Light

The new you is magic.

The knight of swords is active power. It is yang power. Now is the time for yin power. Magnets can be powerful. This is the time to attract. Draw your power and best life to you like a lightning rod. But that requires that you do your part. Working magic means working, albeit working smarter not harder.

To catch lightning in a bottle you have to brave a lot of storms.

If you want to attract attention, you have to let your light shine where people can see it

Transformation requires change – releasing and beginning.

It is circles and cycles within circles and cycles – just like the literal eclipse.

Watch the eclipse in person if you are able. Watch online if you can. If you are night side or far away – know that eclipses exist. Reach out with your intuition and imagination and know that its energy of transformation and magic exists for you too.

After all, you are an Earthling with the privilege of living on a planet where a total solar eclipse occurs.

See you at the next sip.

Beginning Is Changing

It really does happen. When it does, it is both spooky and cool and don’t you dare ignore it.

Hi and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip Tarot – a contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee, or evening tea, or daytime adult beverage or whatever the case may be.

It probably should have felt spooky or ooky or something but it actually felt more like ok, ok, I can take the hint.

When I first filmed today’s card, I got the Fool card but got the edge of the reading cloth in frame and it all just looked wonky so I scooped up the cards and re-shot the whole video. Granted, I didn’t re-shuffle because it was morning and that second cup of coffee was calling my name. Wouldn’t you know it. Cut right to the Fool again.

A tiny part of my brain was all “oooh I should feel all freaky about this” but the best I could really come up with was “welp, I guess YOU have something you want to say, don’t ya.”

I wish I could say there was something earth shaking about it.

No big revelation about all the new name change energy. No change your life pronouncements. No big wave of energy from the collective zeitgeist.

Sometimes little ideas can be big ah-HA moments for someone, somewhere.

The one simple little idea the Fool card brought today is just this: that in order for something to begin, something has to change.

No beginning, no change and no change, no beginning.

The proverb says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. To take that step, you have to let go and give up your current location.

Frustrated that things aren’t moving, that things aren’t beginning? What are you holding on to? Why are your feet so firmly planted where they are?

To take your journey’s first step, you have to change where you are standing.

The TaoCraft Tarot archives and lots of free Tarot posts are available on the newly re-named Sage Words Tarot website & blog. There is a link to the website in the podcast show description. Like what you see? Buy Sage a coffee to sip while she reads Tarot for you. Readings and memberships all support this non-monetized blog, podcast and social media Tarot content.

Thanks for reading and listening. See you at the next sip!

NEW! Crystal Cast Reading

TaoCraft is four years old today, but this new crystal cast reading is today years old today.

My Tarot career isn’t shiny and new, but these readings certainly are.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today is the 4th anniversary of TaoCraft Tarot’s grand opening. Even though I’ve been doing reading cards since the early nineties, publicly under the nicknames Baihu and Modern Oracle since 2003 or so, in 2018 I re-named re-branded and re-launched everything as TaoCraft Tarot. I still hope to re-introduce everything because knowing is more comfortable than not knowing and I want everyone, new and old friends and followers alike, to feel comfortable and at home here.

At four years old, TaoCraft as a whole is like a well used favorite pair of jeans with all of the reasons for the name chang well out of the broom closet, but today I’d like introduce a brand shiny new kind of reading.

New to me, in any case. I’ve never offered these publicly before.

Casting type of divination isn’t new. Throwing coins to gain wisdom from the I ching is an ancient practice. People probably have been doing psychic readings with tossed objects since someone dropped some chicken bones on a patch of dirt. Charm casting had a moment on social media a few years ago. I had a charm reading once. It was – forgive me – charming. There is just no better word for it. At was insightful and helpful and kind which a credit to the reader more than the charms.

Those are all parts of the powerful roots that I hope to bring to the crystal casting experience. For those of you listening on the podcast, you

The unique part of this is not the casting and pure intuitive reading process, the unique part is the stuff I’ve put in my wise woman’s little reading bag of tricks, so to speak. Inspired in part by that charm casting reading, but also by Crystal Vaults crystal readings, Thom Pham’s Rune Cards of Mannaz and Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice (which I may add to my literal grab bag once they arrive from the kickstarter in a few months) I’m using black crystal chips for protection, clear quartz crystal chips for clarity and to amplify psychic energy, and lapis lazuli rune stones for wisdom, insight and integrity.

Looking at the example video above (on the blog and podcast website. If you are listening to the podcast I’ll put a link in the show description for you if you’d like to see the example) we see two lines which brings to mind converging paths or converging concerns. On is mostly black chips, the other mostly clear chips, with the two converging in the middle of the scattered chips. I get the impression this is about protecting your vision, guarding your insight until it is the right time. I ‘hear’ … hear meaning that the intuition comes as words instead of mental images … “don’t overshare”. If I apply this to my situation, it reminds me of the whole squirrel rave meme that has been popping up the schedule announcements and all the changes in planning over the spring and summer particularly. The advice is to “play things close to the vest” so to speak. I’ll explain more later, but I’m not going to announce schedules and plans so much anymore so things can adapt and be more agile over all. Oversharing seems like a bad idea in the short term future it seems.

See the X, the Gebo rune? It means gift, generosity, partnership…all hints of being in a flow of good things. The blank side rune hints at potential. I hear “blank slate” with great potential to choose and write the future being present on the path ahead.

See how that works?

I’m offering these at an introductory price until the end of November 2022 then they will cost the same as a one card Tarot reading. Please visit the blog and podcast website for details.

i know it isn’t exactly polite to ask for presents on your own business anniversary. Every year, I break my own rule of no cutsey pants promotions rule and do something to celebrate the deep authenticity and the anniversary of the TaoCraft web name and blog title. This year it was $1 Tarot readings. Now I’m asking for a little treat from you, not tricks involved. If you could comment on the blog or to the blog if your platform supports that – I’d really like to hear from you. What do you think of the crystal casting idea? What do like, hate, or want to see more of here in the blog and podcast? If I could trick or treat at your door tonight, I’d rather hear your thoughts than get a candy.

Thank you all for listening and reading. Thank you all for being here, and making the past four years so worthwhile.

Happy Halloween!

Think

This isn’t an IBM ad. I’m talking about that thing you do with your brain.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

I’m glad I listened to pure impulse and picked up my Steampunk Tarot today. If you search the blog, you can see all the old posts about the Judgement card. I don’t know how much sense any of it makes. Some people have a significator card, a card they feel represents their essence. Or at least most of us have a card or two or a few that we resonate with more than the others. The judgement card, on the other hand, is my nemesis card. It pushes my buttons and pokes at old scars in ways that aren’t always helpful.

I love the steampunk deck’s version of Judgement though. It is the only Judgement card that doesn’t send me into a puddle of spiraling, evangelical induced post-traumatic babble like other versions the judgement and hierophant (aka pope) cards typically do.

The judgement card, like the rest of the major arcana, has at least two major threads of meaning woven into it.

One is the judgement day, face the music kind of judgement, not unlike how we might say a court judgement or a lawsuit judgement. The legal judgement also connects to the second thread…the decision making process itself. The word “reckoning” works here too. An older meaning for reckoning is to settle a debt or account. But it also means calculation or deciding, like “navigation by dead reckoning.” The biggest problem with judgement card is how easily it can slip into petty judgmentalism.

My least favorite representation of the Judgement card is, as you might expect, is the Waite Smith Tarot. Pamela Smith’s art is saturated with christian symbolism with angels, trumpets, dead looking naked people standing in graves. That whole rapture-ish resurrection second coming thing always gives me that nervous eye tick feeling. Past experience shows the slip to judgmentalism is very short with that kind of symbolism around.

Let’s just say if that kind of religion is your jam, go for it. For me it’s a jar jammed full of glowing green radioactive toxicity. In fact, in the back of my mind, I have always low key hoped that my Tarot work would help others who disliked and rejected by the American evangelicals as much as it has helped me to recover from a childhood in that subculture.

But today, thankfully, all of that is beside the point because the card is pointing to the other connotation, the “use your head” and “use good judgement” part of the card.

The Steampunk deck is good for steering intuition away from the Smith artwork. In fact, this artwork has the opposite effect. It could easily have a “face the music” connotation, but in her guidebook for the deck Aly Fell interprets it as “heeding a call.” That is a card meaning I can resonate with. Not so much a judgement in the traditional sense, not so much answering a “calling” in the religious sense, but rather a actively thinking about our life path and thinking about the meaning we infuse into what we do.

The image also calls to mind some of my favorite D.J. and E.D.M. music like Mystery Skulls and Daft Punk. It taps into my cyberpunk side as much as the Steampunk aesthetic for some reason.

It all takes me to a happy place of thinking and reason perfectly blended with abstract ideas and creativity.

It’s a personality thing that works for some people more than others. It also brings to mind Myers-Briggs personality categories. Today’s card is a comfort zone for all the thinkers, all the people with a T as the third of their four letter category. This is one for my fellow geeks.

For feelings people, those with the “F” in their code, it might be more challenging. It might be harder for them to let their head rule their heart for whatever challenges life might pose for them.

Challenge or comfort zone, the call the Judgment card is asking us to heed is a simple one: Think.

Thank you all for reading and listening!

While no appointment needed email Tarot readings by the author are available to order on the blog website, the blog itself and the podcast are not monetized. Your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Changing for Fall

https://youtu.be/k4_qUXADTLE

The short summer hiatus is over.

YouChoose is back from a short summer hiatus with a slight tweek

The three card ‘pathway layout’ and the first three pathway related cards of the 5 and 7 card layouts have already shifted from a time focus (the old past-present-future related position meanings) to a more timeless energy focus.

I’m making the same shift in focus as I read the interactive cards, too.

We all know that the internet is forever. Instead of reading for a particular day or week, if I focus on right-here and right-now instead of a particular place in time, it might make the videos more time-less by focusing on the present moment.

I’m very thankful and glad that some readers have found and like some older posts. Thank you all. If someone comes across this post after the coming week. By focusing on the now takes this reading outside of linear time because now is the only time that there is.

The part where you choose is still the same. Pause the video if you need a moment, then choose a card. Then restart the video (or just let if go if you choose quickly) and listen to the reading. It still comes out a little time referenced, a little focused on ‘today’ but today could be…should be and will be…right for your day, whenever that day may be when you watch the video or read this post.

Part of the reasoning behind the podcast and partial youtube sabbatical was social media was getting a little noisy, energetically speaking. Too much horse puckey even for me.

Which is a good reason for NOT changing the choice / interactive component. Being able to choose your own card, even for a broad blog-post social media kind of reading, cuts through the noise. You know that the message is for you. The randomness surpasses the coincidences if that makes any weird sense. What are the chances of you choosing that video out the bazillions on the internet and choosing that one card of three on any given day? Sure, if you follow the blog and read new posts as they come out that reduces the random chance element, but hopefully it will have meaning or give a little inspiration just the same.

Please enjoy. I hope you like the little change. All comments and feedback are welcome. Happy Fall!

Summer 2020 Half Minute of Zen

One of my favorite summer spots, in spite of the road construction noise near by.

If nothing else, just for these few seconds, be ok with who you are and where you are. Just for 30 short seconds, allow yourself to know everything is just as it needs to be in this time and place on your path. For these 30 seconds allow yourself to know that you are complete, you are all that is needed and exactly as you are needed to be in this moment.

12 Second Tarot: Six of Wands (8 Nov 19)

A small shift in perception is all it takes to be at peace with yourself. Even if it doesn’t seem like a win right now, today is an step along life’s way and necessary to getting where you want to go. Good or bad, it is a stepping stone. It is ok to be at peace with that.