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 blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your emotional support coffee
On Fridays, I want to get back to writing “Weekend Oracle” and draw an Oracle card to get a feel for the weekend energies and maybe get a hint how to best navigate this liminal time. Not everyone gets a work break on the weekends, and they may enjoy the same heads up the rest of us like on Mondays. Plus, with the vast majority of folks on a weekday schedule, weekends have a different vibe, they are the space between work week for the majority of us. Weekends have a different vibe, and a touch of that liminality where magic lives.
I started to do that today, but still got the intuitive ‘nope’. Halloween last night might have been a pressure valve. The collective energy here in the US may have taken a deep breath, a long drink of a cold beer and a hefty dose of chocolate last night, but things may re-ramp up as we sprint to the finish line with this election thing as far as the actual voting goes.
So nope.
I’m still going on meatspace sabbatical for collective energy readings. Y’all on your own with whatever coping skills you already have on board (reaches for coffee and emotional support Doritos)
Private readings, however, are a whole different story.
I’ve been doing those all along, and last night was the first time in a while they layouts weren’t all supercharged with big time major arcana energy. There were major arcana cards all around, so no stagnant or stuck-energy messages, but nothing over the top either. All very pleasant and positive, actually.
Encouraged by that, I drew a “weekend update” Tarot card this morning for myself rather than the collective. It may apply to a broader audience – In fact, I hope this is a collective reading even though I’m not inclined to really read it that way.
Eww – no – still too sticky mess melange of right wing-y nazi-ish nastiness out there, despite it being a sunny, cool, pleasant morning where I am…
So still no on the collective energy read, but in a good way.
The card was the Sun which is about as all-good as Tarot gets. It is a card of happiness, optimism, joy, success and all of those things we like to hear. I’m not so overly optimistic as to think of this as a good omen for the election outcome, but it is going to be OK between now and Tuesday.
There is just as much chance of happiness as there is of anything else.
Sage Sips blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
Does this collective energy reading resonate for you? If not, private readings are available HERE
In this series of “Choose Your Card” posts, we are looking at topics instead of time. Instead of a “Card of the day” or a “look at the week ahead” let this reading guide whatever is on your mind.
At the same time, I’ll frame the reading through the lens of a major arcana card. We can grow our understanding of they major arcana card through the other cards.
I love when things have a little nuance, depth and complexity. This format adds YOUR intuition to the reading because YOU CHOOSE which card carries the best message for you. The lower cards help us understand the upper card and vice versa.
Choose a card.
Pause the video if you need more time to decide.
Restart to see the reveal.
Today’s major arcana companion card is the Magician. The magician often symbolizes manifestation, transformation, attraction. These are all about energy and energy is all about flow.
King of Pentacles: Manifesting money is one thing, but knowing what you want the money FOR is the real magic. If you want money to pay your bills and meet your needs focus on having those things, not on the money itself. Focus on the thing, not the money that helps you get it. More so if that thing the money helps you get is something intangible, one step beyond material things.
For example, think of someone who thinks they want money for an expensive car, but what they really want is the attention the car brings or the self worth that the attention brings. Focusing on manifesting or attracting money won’t be as powerful as focusing on the end product and core issue. In this example, don’t focus on gaining money, focus on gaining feelings of self-worth. Something like that is the real treasure that the Magician manifests and the King of of Pentacles protects.
Nine of Swords: Sometimes worry is worse than useless. Use real world stress management strategies to calm anxiety so your fear doesn’t become self fulfilling prophecy.
In their brilliant 1988 Oracle deck “Medicine Cards” Jamie Sams and David Carson frame the seemingly timid rabbit as a fearless warrior.
A rabbit could easily be paralyzed by fear. Bunnies are small, soft and don’t have a lot of protection. There are a bunch of bigger animals who would love to eat rabbit for dinner. But no. Rabbits use their small size to hide and their speed to run to that shelter. They are alert and literally get the jump on danger by being quick to run. Rabbit lives in happiness and contentment in the middle of a dangerous world by using its strengths which aren’t obvious at first. . Rabbit is a lesson in how to live with fear by facing it and dealing with it without wallowing in anxiety and potentially calling those fears into reality.
The nine of swords, as with rabbit, reminds us to deal with fears in real world ways so we don’t unintentionally activate the magician’s powers and call empty worries to us.
The Fool: A new beginning is the easiest magic of all. Take a deep breath. Remember every moment is a new one. Now begin again.
It’s said that every day above ground is a good one. It is also said that there is no time like the present. Clocks and calendars are man-made inventions. Life and energy is under no obligation to follow them.
There is only one moment: right here and right now. You can use it as a fresh start any time you want.
Thanks for watching and reading! Sage Sips blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee See you at the next sip!
Being raised on a steady diet of 60s sitcom re-runs, part of me still wants nose twitching, wand waving, hand gesturing, incantation mumbling, midnight margarita saturated POOF! magic.
It’d be fun, you have to admit. But out here in the real world things aren’t so simple. There is magic, and then there is magick. I like making the distinction between stage or fictional magic and the spiritual practice of magick by using the ‘k’ at the end for the latter.
Besides, the K just looks cool.
Regardless of whether you think magic is fictional fun or if magick is your path, The Magician is a very powerful card. It is a card of transformation, in essence, of initiating and controlling change. This differs from the kind of big life change we might see with the Death or Tower card. The key is initiating the change, controlling the change and, importantly, working for the change. They don’t call it working magic(k) for no reason.
TV magic is alluring because it is all instant gratification but it lacks potential and possibility. Real magick is full of potential and possibility, but the gratification it brings is slow, inexorable, deep and lasting.
In a daily collective energy Tarot reading like this, the message is in that potential…and the change. Change really is possible. In this case it is self-initiated and primarily internal. New attitudes, new habits, new feelings, new lifestyles, new philosophies all take time.
The magician is powerful. Tap in to that power – however long it takes. Real magick is absolutely possible, given the necessary time and willingness to put in the most difficult kind of work: personal growth. Change your perceptions and expectations and POOF! you are magick.
The magician extends one arm up and one arm down. We are reminded of Hermes’ quote “as above, so below” but we shouldn’t forget the next part…”as within, so without” Our world can transform by changing the lens through which we view it.
We might not be able to change an adversary into a toad or make a coin appear out of thin air or change lead into gold, but the world within can be expressed without in an instant.
The lyrics to Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero” include “Love and compassion, that day is coming.” That day can be here the moment we decide to be loving and compassionate.
That is the magick that can be found in every little thing and in every passing moment. That is the magick that can change our world.
Thank you so much for reading! This post was originally published in 2020 and updated May 2024
Want a little taste of Tarot magick of your own? Private readings are available HERE. This blog isn’t monetized so a portion of the proceeds from private reading sales support the free Tarot readings on this blog and the YouTube Channel.
Sage Sips Blog is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
YOU CHOOSE:
Your choices are everything. They are the cause that brings your future into effect. Tarot helps to guide those choices so you can make good ones.
Tarot doesn’t tell you what will happen in life. Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
Death: OF COURSE this is your eclipse day card. Eclipses symbolize change and transformation. That is exactly what the death card is about. Only an empty cup can be filled. Let the old and toxic go and welcome the new and better in.
Five of swords: The price of victory is too high. Is this really a hill worth dying on? Redefine your goals. Work toward a victory that makes sense. You don’t have to prove your point based on blind principle.
High Priestess: Magic and spirituality come only from within. Yes, it really is nothing more than the moon’s shadow. The magic and mystery is up to you to feel and find. music via youtube shorts Allyman’s Tarot Deck used with permission @publishinggoblin1072
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.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, the eight of pentacles and the stuff you do for you.
Welcome to Tao Craft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the eight of pentacles, which points to work and productivity.
Which is too bad because I’m a lazy, lazy girl this morning.
Headphones on, listening to one of my favorite playlists on Spotify, drinking coffee and writing about Tarot (or knitting) is pretty much my happy place. Life is good at the moment.
But life isn’t always comfy chairs and cinnamon latte.
Shit happens, and when it does, empty platitudes and pep talks are no help whatsoever. Today’s energy could too easily slip into that. On the surface it could sound like some kind of suck it up buttercup, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps puritanical platitude.
Today’s energy isn’t suggesting that you can just cheer up, work hard and everything will be ok. Far from it.
It is suggesting that there is a whole world of coping mechanisms out there. A healthy lifestyle is something that you do for you. The emphasis today is on the word DO. Work isn’t all bad. The hack is finding the right kind of thing do for where your head is at.
When I saw the card, it reminded me of another life long ago in a galaxy far far away. One of the psychiatrists I used to work for back in my long abandoned physician assistant days always said that a job is as good as therapy. It wasn’t for all of the toxic anti-welfare, racism tinged, right-wing-ish reasons that might spring to mind these days. He was talking about structure, diversion, and self esteem.
As supportive as structure and getting something – anything – done in a day can be, I’m not talking about actual depression or real world problems here.
The same kind of advice about structure, diversion and accomplishment re-emerged during pandemic quarantine. For the average person under stress or in the occasional normal doldrums, accomplishing something – anything – in your day can be the little boost that you need. The degree varies from individual to individual and from day to day. Some of us secretly get off on going mach 2 with our hair on fire. For others, fresh pajamas and getting the dishes done is enough.
Self care is as much about mindset as action. For some people self care and a mood boost is all bubble baths and candle light. For others it is turning up the punk rock and cleaning the house. Anything, even being productive at some kind of work or project, can be self care.
The point in all of this is to do the thing that is right for you and your day in the amount that is right for your needs…but for goodness’ sake do SOMETHING. It might make you feel better than you think it will. Even if you are a lazy, lazy person like me.
Like everything for me, it gets back to Zen and Taoist philosophy akin to the old adage “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” Self care and stress management doesn’t have to be fancy, high minded or separate from life. Like Zen spirituality, self care and stress management is all about the moment to moment mundane living of life.
If you will allow me to indulge in a moment of fangirling, Madam Adam, one of my favorite social media follows, put it absolutely brilliantly. It was spot-on perfect when I first his post yesterday, and the eight of pentacles this morning confirms it. As he said “self-care is doing what you do anyway, but doing it with intent.”
Bullseye!
Through simple intention, anything can be self care including a day of work and productivity. Through simple intention, the mundane becomes magick.
Thanks for reading and listening! I always appreciate any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments you can give.
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It’s easy to think yourself into circles. This is a card for all the over-thinkers of the world, but anyone can become overwhelmed.
Sometimes the seven of cups is a good problem to have. If you only have one really viable option, then deciding is easy. This card is about an embarrassment of riches when it comes to options and choices. That’s not the worst problem to have. But however good or bad the problem may be, how do you solve it?
The back burner is your friend.
I grew up in a very rural place south of the Mason Dixon line. Whatever else you may think of southern culture in the U.S. the food is fantastic. It seems like everyone is born knowing how to cook and cook well. In that elite company, regardless how many potluck dishes or helping hands you have in the kitchen, making the turkey for Thanksgiving was the black belt test. In our family the hoopla was at the house wherever the turkey baker lived and everyone helped but if you own the kitchen and you make the bird you are in charge. To put it in Star Trek terms, if you are Captain Turkey, you have the con. The way they could get everything together, hot and tasty, all on the table all at the same time was a wonder to behold.
Even cooking a comparatively small meal for our own little household, getting it all in the same place at the same time takes a little strategy. The Thanksgiving meals I make are far more Cowboy Bebop than Captain Kirk. But it is still a hint about how to deal with an overwhelming number of choices, tasks or side dishes: Shift your attention.
Take a break and work on something else. It works for too many choices and for a lack of ideas. If you feel like a deer in headlights or feel like you “got nothin'” to give to the situation. rotating your attention to a different project works a magic of its own.
Today’s Tarot card is the High Priestess from the major arcana.
In physics, or at least in popularized science shows, they say higher dimensions are in contact with us. The fifth dimension and higher are described as being impossibly close to each and every object, each and every cell in our bodies. The mysteries of the universe are literally close at hand. Magic lives within the mundane.
Arthur Clark famously said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” To my limited education in the matter, higher dimensions and quantum physics more than sufficiently advanced to seem that way. I wonder if all the sturm and drang about writers connecting advanced science to esoteric philosophy being “pseudoscience” is really just a matter of semantics. If a person is untrained in physics and calculus but adept at philosophy and spirituality, of course they are going to default to non-scientific language to communicate difficult ideas. It isn’t “pseudo” any more than English is a pseudo language compared to Swahili or vice versa.
Arguably saying “the apples fall off trees” has more real life value than saying “gravitational force is equal to the mass of two objects multiplied together, divided by the distance between their centers then multiplied by the gravitational constant” Both are true, both are valid and both have their own kind of importance.
Whether you call it higher dimensions, universal life energy, the Force, the Tao, or just plain magic, the mystical parts of life are integrated within the mundane. Mystery is a close layer beneath everything.
Thank you for reading and listening.
Today’s Tarot short format card readings by Ronda Snow of TaoCraft Tarot are available on multiple platforms starting in October 2021. Find these sip of tea sized Tarot readings on YouTube Shorts, Clairvoyant Confessional podcast, the blog page on Tao Craft Tarot .com and on the Tao Craft Tarot’s ko-fi .com blog.
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