luck – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Week Ahead Tarot: Summit and Crossroads

This is different.

When I do these week ahead readings, typically I either use my Action Eases Anxiety layout with my one and only Lenormand deck, or I use another layout with one of my several RWS decks, whichever one intuitively seems right for the moment.

Oddly, today’s energy asked for a TaoCraft Path layout with the Lenormand deck. Gives me the feeling that either this is going to land with someone personally OR that the collective energy has something to say and wants to be heard. With any kind of luck, it’s both.

Anyway, here’s what we got.

Influence from the past: The Mountain (right)

OK – maybe the storm lasted 6 years instead of two. I ‘hear’ (meaning the intuition comes as mental words or music instead mental images) both the words “end game” and an old 1970s song “Looks Like We Made It” (Barry Manilow? – ugh. OK, message received. I’ll brain bleach that with music I actually like now)

The feeling and imagery reminds me of images given toward the end of covid lockdown, of cautiously coming out of a storm shelter to see what damage has been done. Maybe that was actually the eye of the hurricane and 2024 was the second side of the 2020 storm.

It also gives me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy crawls over the edge of the cliff where his dad is staring over the edge thinking Indy was dead. So Indy just stands there too, trying to see what everybody was looking at.

Long story short, this card is letting us know we made it – again. We’ve climbed another cliff, and now it’s time to drag ourselves over the edge, see what everyone else is looking at and figure out what to do next.

Current Energy: Crossroads (middle)

With this I ‘hear’ “Hekate” and “keys”. The mental image is coming to the top of the mountain or dragging over the cliff edge as with the last card and immediately being faced with a crossroads. The straight ahead path immediately heads down the other side of the mountain. Left and right paths go along the summit ridge in opposite directions. All are equally lit by the setting or rising sun, all three seem equally compelling. My instinct is to stay still and gather a better sense of things. Choosing to do nothing just now is still a choice. I hear “this needs time”

For YOU as individual, I hear “the key is imagination.” If you imagine that your stresses are winding down (regardless whether they FEEL that way or not right now)…imaging that they are. Imagine that you have survived your stress, it is behind you, and you have four clear choices of how things go from here in the near future. Left, right, straight ahead or stand right the hell here for a minute, which pulls you? Which looks brighter in your mind’s eye? Where are each of those choices headed? Which direction do you WANT to go?

“No rest for the wicked” as the saying goes. We are being hit with a deliberate, mindful choice as soon as the wave of stress and challenge begins to pass. The time to choose your next steps is NOW. It’s about the mindfulness of the choice. Even if the choice is to stop and rest for a minute, MAKE that choice deliberately. It doesn’t matter as much what you choose, only that you choose it with full awareness and purpose.

You can change your mind later, the point is to at least make up your mind for now. Don’t just let this week happen to you. Experience it on purpose.

Best Next Steps: The Stork (left)

The Stork symbolizes newness and cycles. Not all change is bad, but new change is hot on the heels of old change. This last phase, this last storm is rapidly closing, but there is no fence to straddle, no flat path to follow. Standing still is a choice on the razor’s edge. New movement and change comes quickly. In this mental image of the summit and the paths, the top is narrow, maybe a meter wide. Straight ahead slopes down quickly, right and left remains flat but narrow along the ridge. Every direction is equally light, equally compelling.

You can always change your mind later. This feels less about which direction you choose…less about WHAT you choose and more about making a choice NOW and even more importantly choosing AT ALL. Don’t let this week just happen to you. Be deliberate and mindful about what you do, even if it is to nothing. Stay the course if you want, but do it on purpose.

Astrology isn’t my strong suit, but it is the full moon, a blue moon, in Saggitarius for whatever that is worth. The astrology side of social media caught my attention with it because it is supposed to be good or lucky for my sun, moon and rising signs. It is supposed to be at time to plant seeds of intention as this is an opportune time for the to come to full and good fruition.

I’ll take that.

But I get the sense that this is an opportune window of time, a favorable energy environment for deciding your direction. Nothing has to be finished now. The Stork card hints at birth and beginning. Take it all in for a moment, but plant the seeds now. Or as social media’s Tank Tolman says….begin where you stand.

For some, standing is a beginning.

The past has been hard. You’ve seen things and done stuff, and crawled back up and over the edge of the cliff. Right away we are hit with the likelihood of more change, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Level and downhill is easier than dragging ourselves up a steep climb. It is all sunlit and warm (gives pleasant sunset vibes) The thing to do to move forward in harmony is just to do it – do anything or nothing so long as we do it deliberately

Here is to a sunny summit kind of week for us all. See you at the next sip!

Action Eases Anxiety: Trust Fall

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The “Action Eases Anxiety” layout is inspired by the sentence-like quality that Lenormand style tarot readings tend to have. We’ve talked about that before in he “learn with me” series about Lenormand

In this layout, the left card functions as the subject of the sentence. It is the thing that is, be it your current situation or our shared energy environment.

The right card is like the verb in a sentence, the action, the thing to do now that might help the situation – or at lease easy your worry a tiny bit.

Today, the mental image that came with both cards is an advertisement where a person goes “trust fall” and falls backward into a huge pile of dried plants to demonstrate the plant stems and leaves that they don’t use in their select flower-only suppliment.

As much as I like that product, I’m not here to endorse anything. The trust fall bit of it is the key to the intuitive image.

“When things seem terrible, it can feel impossible that they will get better. if the future is too big for a leap of faith, then all you can do is take a trust fall into the present moment.” comes through here.

The “what it is card” is the bouquet. If today isn’t stressed, enjoy the beauty of it. Enjoy the moment. If you are feeling stressed, try to sort out what of the stress is rooted in the past and future. Try to see the present moment for what it is. Look around you. Are you in life threatening danger? If you are – then you aren’t reading this. If that’s the case you have bigger things to do than read blogs and scroll social media. So if you are seeing this, stop: Take in this moment for what it is. Stop and smell the flowers the bouquet card is offering. It also reminds me of that quote attributed to Mark Twain “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, the most of which never happened.”

What it is is not so bad when you eliminate the parts that are actually worries about a future that may never happen.

What to do is the Clover card. It is a card of luck. The doing is simple in this case. Simple, but easier said than done when anxiety is raging. Acknowledging and accepting that things aren’t so bad and are getting better. When anxiety or sadness is raging in your brain, it’s hard to feel as lucky as you really are.

Acknowledging your luck attracts it to you.

Tell yourself that you are lucky.

Blind, rote, repeated affirmations even when you don’t feel them isn’t going to magically manifest the thing you want. They won’t do that even if you do feel it. But what that can do is bring your feelings and your energy into better alignment with the flow of things and help you find what you really need, even if it is different from your original desires and expectations.

You are lucky, it is just a matter of finding it. And it may look like something you never in a million years imagined.

Thanks for reading!

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Seneca on opportunity

Page of Wands meets Seneca on Luck and opportunity

Thoughts on the nine of wands, holding space, and the energy sensitive person tomorrow (or maybe Saturday)

Late winter schedule: none. We are in full pirate radio squirrel rave mode until further notice.

Have a good day! – Sage

Focus for Flow

What is it about money that ties people up in knots?

Hello and welcome to Sage’s Short Sip Tarot, a nano blog-cast and Tarot reading in the time it takes to sip from your coffee, or tea, or adult beverage or whatever it is you sip this time of day. I’m glad you are here!

Today’s card is the six of pentacles. Pentacles are associated with the physical realm, often with career or wealth. The six in particular is said to represent generosity, money flow, sharing, paying kindnesses forward, that sort of thing.

Many long years ago, way back in the before times, in the very early days of my professional reading career, I had one of the nicest experiences with getting paid for my Tarot skills and it didn’t involve actual money at all.

After the reading, and after my modest fee was paid (I’m still super affordable by the way) the client and I were chatting about Reiki and natural health services in our area, and business cards for her new side venture as a masseuse. I forget the exact context, but the thing that rocked my world was when we shook hands at the end she said something like “I have money luck, now I’m sharing some of it with you.”

That was the last time I talked with that charming, vivacious lady. I don’t know how her new business turned out, but I do know this. Here mindset in that moment was a treasure, and I was touched by her easy generosity in sharing it.

In these days of supply chain issues, inflation, dire news about government money management and the general cost of living, finances can be a fear inducing to mildly terrifying thing.

I can’t promise you crazy things like attracting or manifesting wealth, but I can share a few thoughts that might take the edge of a little bit of the worry.

First I’m reminded of the quote from Disney’s Mary Poppins that “enough is as good as a feast.” Defining your “enough” simply and within your means may not actually pay the bills, but it might help untwist the gut-knots a little bit.

Yeah, I know. It’s a very Tao Te Ching kind of idea. Just because I changed the name of the blog and podcast doesn’t mean the influence went away.

The other helpful thing is the client’s gift to me.

Try it once. Just stop for a second and think of yourself the way she thought of her joyful self. Think of yourself as someone who is fortunate and the things you need come to you almost without effort. Just for a minute allow yourself to have money-luck.

That isn’t going to make things magically happen. This isn’t about the law of attraction or some cultish prosperity gospel. You still have to work and plan and hustle just like before. But try it. Thinking of yourself as having money luck shaves a tiny bit off of the fear of not having enough. When you are just that tiny bit less stressed, you might think a little clearer. You might find a solution or an option that was missing before. When you think of yourself as having money luck it gives you a particle of optimism that all of your work, planning and effort will pay off in the end after all.

Knowing how you are going to go about getting what you need is money luck and riches indeed.

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Thanks again! See you at the next sip.