How to move forward in harmony with it all: Five of Cups
The energies are ripe for you to rediscover your true self, remember the things you genuinely love, and embrace all of the things that actually make you happy – to hell with what other people think or if it makes money. (Am taking my own advice there – hence the void scream)
Happy is valuable. A moment of joy is priceless.
The past year of death-card change and chaos energy is finally starting to move away. Things are still weird, but you are adapting to the weird and making friends with your inner demons. Adapting and rolling with whatever happens makes adapting and rolling feel like home.
Loss and release is sometimes necessary to make room for something better.
This is a perfect week for shadow work, very in keeping with the season. Don’t bury your dark side. Make friends with it, and make your light and dark combination greater than the sum of the parts. There is magic to be made in killing the past (a la Kylo Ren) to become who you really are. There is no part of you so bad that there isn’t someone who has been there with you at some point. There is no part of you so dark that you are excluded from the human race.
Dark is necessary for light to shine. Or as my favorite Affordable Floors song says – there is no calm without the storm.
Embrace the dark as a place to let your light shine.
This is the Oracle of Secrets from the Alleyway Oracles by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission of Publishing Goblin LLC
The Luna Moth symbolizes coming night time dreams and seeking light amid the darkness.
I ‘hear’ (meaning the intuition comes as words, music or sounds rather than mental images) that “the night time is potent” Mystery and magic is in the nighttime darkness. Pay attention to your dreams. The answers often find you there, without you seeking them.
Understanding or “interpreting” dreams is a tricky thing. They are personal and personalized in the extreme. Whatever YOU think it means IS what it means. Dream dictionaries, books, even a professional psychic’s interpretation is only secondary help.
It’s not something I offer professionally, but when it comes to understanding dreams for myself or for coaching someone else with their dream interpretation, I take a hybrid approach.
The first step is deciding if you want to understand it at all. Are dreams just a random function of REM sleep, or can they hold meaning and significance? Is dream interpretation crackpot nonsense or something that is actually, psychologically helpful?
I’m not a huge fan of Sylvia Browne, her writing is way to0 Christianized to be helpful to me. But I did read her Book of Dreams and thought her approach was paradigm shifting and revolutionary. Instead of trying to understand the symbolism for each granular little detail, first understand the type of category of the dream: Stress release, processing the day, hopes and aspirations, sudden insights and so on – or the rarest of them all, the psychic or prophetic predictive kind of dream.
I don’t think prophetic type dreams are really possible. I see it as our mind being freed from preconceived assumptions and social constraints and then being freed to connect small, previously un-noticed details that are really big road signs to the direction events are headed. So-called ‘prophetic’ dreams are really just reading the room, seeing the direction things are headed in a preternaturally clear way that only sleeping intuition can give us.
Once you decide dreams can be meaningful, and which category a particular dream falls into, then you can decide if the individual elements of a dream are literal, or symbolic in a personal way or in a dream-dictionary -ish Jungian collective unconscious sort of way.
If you would like to learn more about dreams and their symbolism, my favorite reads are:
Sylvia Browne’s Book of Dreams by Sylvia Browne
Dream Alchemy by Ted Andrews
Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LeBerge
Thanks for reading! Throughout April I will be primarily posting Tarot inspired Haiku for National Poetry Writing Month. Happy NaPoWriMo everyone!
Some of the usual readings will be sprinkled in too, so please follow the blog so you don’t miss a thing!
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
From the Modern Oracle / TaoCraft Tarot archives, lightly edited to update links, fix a few typos, etc.
Q: Are Tarot cards demonic?
A: No.
Hell and demons are religious ideas, so religious people might give you a different answer. As I see it, religion and spirituality are totally different things (please see yesterday’s post about religion and Tarot) I believe that Tarot is a combination of science and spirituality with religion having no part in the process. No religion, no demons.
The scientific part has to do with resonance and vibration. Think of guitar strings. Pluck one string and it vibrates at a certain frequency and makes a certain note. Twang a different size string and you get a different note. If two separate strings are tuned to the same note, then you can play one string and the other vibrates too, making a similar sound along with the first one (resonance). Tarot cards are the guitar pick, not the note. The guitar string you choose and play sets the tone for Tarot experience you have and any resonant energies that come along with it. If you focus on the demon frequency, you have a bigger chance of resonating with a “demonic” experience. If you vibrate at the “guidance” note then that’s what you’ll get. The old adage of “you get out of it what you put into it” has a sort of literal truth here. Expect hellfire, and you might get it. Expect happy, and you might get that too.
To put it into spiritual terms, all you have to do for a demon-free reading is fill yourself with love and light, or ask for protection from some higher energy / protective power. An example might be the “patronus” in the Harry Potter books. Essentially, the shape of your inner light protects you. What shape would you want your inner light to take?
Here is a powerful image from Joy Star’s newsletter (used with permission.) Think of a house on a dark night. Imagine the house filled with cheery lights and a cozy fire in the fireplace. If you open the front door what happens? Does the outer dark come rushing in and extinguish the light, or does the light pour out of the open door and illuminate the dark? This isn’t saying that the dark doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that houses can’t lose power or that disasters don’t happen to people who “think positive” all the time. This is the real world. Dark and dangerous beings and things exist, in both the tangible and intangible realms. Of course bad stuff happens. But good stuff can happen too. Metaphorically speaking, if you turn on the lights before opening the door then you can look out into the night darkness coming in. Fear and superstition turns your lights out. When you are afraid or angry, then dark meets dark at the door.
The spirit world isn’t all sunshine and roses. Natural forces and negative energies from ill-intentioned people do exist. You can protect yourself on spiritual level the same as you protect yourself on a physical level. We put on a raincoat during a storm and stay out of dangerous places alone at night and do all sorts of things to try and stay as physically safe as we can be. Spiritually, energetically, one of the most important protections is simple intention. Intent is a very potent thing. Before you do any spiritual or energy work, very clearly set the clear intention that what you do is only for the highest and best for all concerned. Read, arm yourself with knowledge. Get advice, learn from other people’s experience in order to explore in safety. One of my favorite resources is Psychic Protection by Ted Andrews.
You have probably heard of the ‘spiritual law’ that “Like attracts like.” If you are hopeful, you may attract something inspirational. If you are afraid, you may attract something frightening.
By the same token, if you are genuinely afraid of the cards, then don’t deny or minimize that. It is what it is. If your religious beliefs are in conflict with Tarot readings, then simply find your guidance another way. From my side of things, In my experience, people who are conflicted about Tarot have a hard time hearing the guidance that is offered. Tarot is a great tool for learning, but it isn’t for everyone. If you are seriously worried that Tarot cards are demonic, “occult” or that you’ll burn in hell for having a reading…then you need to find the right kind of guidance for you. Why put that kind of stress on yourself? For Tarot to be helpful, you have to let go of something. Either let go of the religious notions of demons and evil in Tarot, or let go of Tarot as a way for guidance. Either is fine. There is no right or wrong way to find your guidance. These two, religion-induced fear and Tarot readings just don’t mix, like oil and water.
Tarot cards aren’t demonic. It’s WAY worse than that. Tarot cards are reflective. Tarot cards aren’t evil, they are a mirror showing you life’s harsh realities. Choose fear, see fear. Choose love, see love. Choose courage and compassion and see something beautiful.
My reading style is calm, reasonable, no-drama and never occult or scary. I’ve done more first-time readings than I can count. If you would like a safe, no judgement, religion-free way to try a Tarot reading, a five-card email reading is a good choice. Very private, very convenient, very affordable. Order HERE
The moon has a dark side. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful.
It life as a human, just as it is life as a planet in a solar system. Not all is light. Not all is dark. Both are one. Even when the moon looks full to us, half of it faces away from the sun and is in shadow. Every day on earth has its night. And ever person has their shadow side too.
It takes a certain courage to acknowledge the dark side of the moon, the dark side of ourselves, and understand they are one. The shadow exists as certainly as the light. It is how you think about it, how you embrace the both-ness of our existence that matters.
Denying our shadow side, or striving to be “only the light” isn’t natural. Light and dark, yin and yang is our nature. Or to paraphrase the movie The Craft, Magick is both cruel and kind because nature is both. And such is human nature.
Some of the best of our nature is to fully acknowledge and accept our shadow side but still manage to shine.
The moon has a dark side, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful. The whole of you is beautiful too. Go. Shine. You got this.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
There is something to be said for comfort zones.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
It’s been a deeply weird couple of weeks. The hiatus I had hoped to take this week is pushed back until probably mid-September, because of life and stuff. We are back to the usual pattern for a little while, and we are back to the Alleyman’s Tarot. I know I keep saying this, but this card, “The Alley” by deck creator Seven Dane Asmund, truly is my favorite right now. This may be my cue to set aside the deck for daily short sip posts and write a proper, deep-dive review. I wanted to live with the deck and use it and post with it for a while before writing about it to any extent. This is something special, and deserves more than the usual hot take unboxing first look review. I could rant a paragraph about the visual of this card, all night and neon and cyberpunk and Neuromancer. Good book,that. I highly recommend it.
This card in particular landed right in my personal wheelhouse. I hope it speaks to you, too, but it is saying a lot to me. I hope you forgive this little bit of personal indulgence and a post that pays no attention to the outward, zeitgeist energy landscape.
Landscape is a good word here. The Alley card is important to the lore and backstory of the deck. The Alley is where the Alleyman lives out his life’s calling, where he finds his raison d’etre, so wrapped in his comfort zone that it becomes an extension of self more than mere solace. It speaks of our native landscape. By native I mean our most natural, most authentic environment, not necessarily the one of our biological birth.
I’m enjoying that music is available to put on YouTube shorts, TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. For once you get to “hear” what I intuitively heard with this card.
When I say the word “hear” in the context of a Tarot reading, I mean clairaudience. You’ve heard the word clairvoyant, right? That means clear seeing, and it talks about intuitive mental images. Clairaudience is “clear hearing” and it the word for when intuition comes as sounds, music or words instead of mental images. It uses auditory imagination to the same purpose as visual imagination in a reading. It is like ear worming a favorite song, except that it isn’t your song. It is meant for your client or as something you’ve both heard before to help you find a mutual point of reference as you talk through the Tarot reading. In this case it is a bit of both. “You Belong to the City” by Glen Frey came through intuitively and it was also one of my favorites back in the day.
It was inspiration to challenge my comfort zone and find my homecoming.
Seven Dane Asmund writes of the card as quote “my community” and “where everything belongs if there is nowhere else to be or go.” End Quote.
Another song came to mind. It is from the same era, “A Sort of Homecoming” by U2. Put all of this together and I think we get the essential message that we each define our home and homecoming. Just like the old adage that home is where the heart is.
It is a card of finding your natural habitat, whatever it may be. I floundered and felt profoundly misfit in the place where I was raised. It was a bath in itching powder. Suburbia was a warm sunset. Even for an introvert, there is life and light and energy to be found. I belong to the city at its edge.
For some, a foray into a city at night is an exciting adventure. For some – like my rural evangelical birth family – it would be intimidating, or even terrifying. More importantly, for many others, it is every night, it is life, it is home.
To state the overly obvious, a lot of people are born in cities. Being at home there would be the norm. The Alley card is outside of that ordinary. It speaks to me of found family and a found home, a liminal space even within a familiar urban environment. It is a place to belong when you’ve walked away from the places where you don’t.
I wonder if the Alley here can also hint at our shadow side, the unclaimed self. If you feel drawn to this card today, what alleyway lurks within? What dark and liminal space within you is calling to you to befriend it. What dark alley is inviting you home? Is your inner alleyway one that others fear but you know to be filled with shelter and neon light and other wandering spiritual orphans just like you? Urban neon may frighten some, but it is homecoming for others.
Seek your unique kind of light, the kind that makes the dark night into your own neon homecoming.
Thank you for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your favorite morning drink.
Today’s Card is the Hermit from the major arcana
Light is silent.
The thing making the light might make a sound, like a crackling fire or humming street light, but the light itself is utterly silent.
Most, if not all, Hermit cards have a lantern or some symbol for light on them. Hermits choose to be alone. This combination brings to mind classic tropes like the candy suggesting guru on a mountaintop or the tea plucking wise master in a bottled tea commercial. It also brings to mind the mythic association between silence, solitude and enlightenment. Gautama Buddha meditated alone at night under a bohdi tree. Bohdidharma meditated alone facing a cave wall. Micheo Usui meditated alone to realize the Reiki symbols, and so on.
Enlightenment is a quiet thing.
Evangelism is, however, not. It is a normal human thing to be noisy and enthusiastic and want to tell everyone about this nifty new thing you found so the people you care about can benefit from it too. It’s primal. It makes evolutionary sense to put up a screech when you find the clear water stream or the full fruit tree. That’s great that you care enough about people that you want to share your best found treasures with them. But at some point it has to grow up beyond that. At some point it has to ripen from the joy of discovery to the depth and security of lived experience. At some point, deep truths become a silent stream of light lest they be reduced to pearls before swine or gnats around the heads of others.
Some days it is a service to shout to the tribe about the good that you have found. Lights are a signal in the dark as much as a shout. Sometimes the best signal is a silent light.
Welcome to Halloween weekend 2021. Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.
The two of coins is a positive, upbeat card. It is the pentultimate card of balance, second only to the Temperance card in the major arcana. Balance is a bid deal in the holistic health world. Our banner tagline is pretty much “mind, body and spirit in balance.”
Balance implies opposites. It really is like the classic balance scales we’ve all seen, like on the justice statues at court houses. If one side is given more weight than the other, the scales are thrown out of balance.
Around Halloween and Winter Solstice, this kind of balance reminds me of Lynn Andrews’ book Crystal Woman. In it, light and vision are used as another example of balance. In complete darkness, we can’t see anything. By the same token, if there is complete light, our eyes are dazzled and we still can’t see a thing. It is only in the interplay between light and dark that we are able to see anything.
Halloween is a valuable holiday. In reminding us of returning darkness, we are reminded how necessary that darkness is in the balance of things.
Yesterday we talked about Sitting Bulls quote “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.” It’s all well and good to feed the good dog but I think there is more to it than that. It pays to come to know, train and perhaps befriend the bad one. Just as shadow is integral to good vision, knowing our dark side is intergral to personal growht and a truly authentic life.
Long story short, we live in a world of light and dark, good and evil. Balance is the way. Starved dogs become desperate and more violent increasing the fights. Make choices and feed the inner good dog, but don’t ignore or try to starve the other into oblivion. Rather train it, perhaps befriend it. Compassion is the thing to feed both dogs.
There is both light and dark out in the world around us. We are in it, a part of it, and made of the same stuff as the rest of everything. If the universe is black, white, and every shade of grey, so are we. How you experience life depends on which of those many lenses you choose to view it through: light, dark, or some degree of both.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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