Tag: magician

Liminal Foundation

Energy Path Tarot reading for the week ahead

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Merry Monday!

With these fresh cards, it finally feels as if we have moved past the focus on cycles and change and ebbing and flowing. No Moon card or tide images today.

In one sense it feels like we’ve cycled back to that still, “slack water” image that came through a few weeks ago when the big Moon card energy first appeared, but it isn’t “slack” at all, really. It feels more like alert, deliberate, poised, ready-to-move stillness. It is a liminal energy, and the word balance doesn’t quite capture it. It isn’t the dynamic balance or back-and-forth balance that we see in the Temperance and Two of Pentacles cards. It feels more like a flat out, steady, matter-of-fact “BOTH” It isn’t balance or tension between opposites, it is the steady presence of diverse things without tension among them, without a need to balance. That “coexist” bumper sticker comes to mind. 

Oxford Language defines liminal as “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.” The “both” part is key here. Not balance, not cycle, not give and take – flat out all of the above, all at the same time.

It is interesting that we have two aces and one major arcana card. If this was a ‘yes or no’ kind of just for fun reading, it would be a plain YES. We all know Tarot doesn’t really work that way, but I think yes or no readings can be helpful in limited situations. Usually in minor choices where the options truly are equal and the situation is something that could be decided by an actual 50-50 random chance coin toss. Yes/no readings are exactly that – a coin toss, but with slightly more food for thought from three randomly selected Tarot cards adding their two-cents to the conversation.

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September 11 – October 31 2023

Ask a yes/no question in the blog comments to get a FREE “Zombie Cat* yes/no Tarot reading in an upcoming blog post.

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The fading energy is the Ace of Cups. This is a card of creation, creativity and emotions. The current energy is the Ace of Pentacles. The real message is in the two side by side more than either one fading or growing individually. Here is where that liminal both-ness we were talking about earlier is strongest. It isn’t head over heart or emotions over intellect…it is BOTH in generous measure. Think “emotional intelligence.” These two cards together give an energy that is alert, engaged, feeling but thoughtful, active and effective – all at the same time. The two together are an extraordinary foundation upon which to build.

The growing energy, the Magician, is exactly that building process. The Magician is about transformation and manifestation – not just sitting and wishing. In “as above so below” the below is your part of the deal, your end of the table to lift. You do your part in the practical-pentacle part of life, and the universe helps the emotional-energy-spiritual-psychic part. Neither half is better or worse or more important than the other. It isn’t even a see-saw balance of the two. It’s both, all at the same time. The Magician’s magick is about having a foot firmly planted on each side of the “as above, so below” equation. 

That is what makes up liminal spaces and energies and that is what makes up our energy flow for this week. 

At least as it stands now. Please come back Wednesday for another “Odinsday Oracle” post and Friday for the Weekend Update where we’ll take another look at the Magician, our growing energy card to see how it unfolded during the business week and what, if anything, there is to see about the weekend.

Thanks for reading. See you at the next sip! 

*Meet Zombie Cat: This cartoonish alter ego does all of my yes/no readings. Tongue in what’s left of his cheek, Zombie Cat readings have a 100% guarantee to contain word and a 50% chance of being dead wrong.

Alleyman’s Tarot used with permission

Ordinary Days

The road to magick is lined with ordinary days.

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*Po-tay-toes!* Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew… Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (movie 2001)

Some days don’t feel magical. Some days you just have to peel the damn potatoes. 

But if you can do that, when you get through the ordinary, there is magic at the end. Or at least a meal full of filling, satisfying, starchy comfort.

Today is a little like potatoes for me. It is utterly, delightfully, magically ordinary. It is a day off from the day job – but no pressing errands, no frenzy of summer recreation. Just simple household things to do. 

This is where the magic lives.

We talk about attracting and manifesting and living our dreams. But where will the dream live? Where are we attracting TO? Manifested dreams live in our ordinary world, regardless of whether you attracted them there – or if they were there all along just waiting to be seen. Either way, the path to magick is lined with ordinary days.

You may not think it takes courage to live an ordinary day. For some, an ordinary day is a monumental task, made large and seemingly insurmountable by every type and kind of human challenge. For others an ordinary day is a precious commodity made rare by stress and circumstance.

You never know when ordinary will make you a dashing hero or when the potatoes you peeled will light a child’s smile for the golden chips that they made. 

Have courage, do the ordinary, and look for the magic that hides there every day.

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It’s Own Magic

If everything changes in time, doesn’t that mean time is magic?

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the Magician. It’s nice to see some major arcana cards showing up lately. That in itself is a nice little validation for me, that some of the energy and effort that I’ve been investing into refreshing the website and migrating the shop to a different platform in an effort to keep prices down on readings just might pay off.

It’s also an interesting compliment to the summer energy that’s out there. As a whole, the major arcana has so called “higher energy” That’s kind of a confusing way to say it. Sometimes higher vs lower energy is used qualitatively. Higher connotes something more esoteric, more spiritual, somehow “good” or virtuous while lower is sometimes used to connote something more banal and mundane, perhaps lesser quality or even malicious.

When I think of major arcana cards as having higher energy, it is a quantitative thing. Electromagnetic waves that have more cycles per unit of distance are said to have higher frequencies. There are just plain more waves in the wavelength not that they are any better or worse – unless of course you are talking about radiation and living tissue but that’s another story that we’ll ignore for now, since we are talking about Tarot card symbolism, not hard science & physics.

What I’m trying to say is that major arcana cards aren’t any better or any worse than the minor arcana. There is a surprising amount of overlap between some minor arcana cards and the majors. The minor cards have a gentler touch with the advice. They hand you a cookie and tell you that by the time you are done it will all be right as rain. Major arcana cards are more ka-pow. They are Oda Mae looking you straight in the eye and telling you that you in danger, girl.

I’ve been told by my Lenormand Tarot reading friends that the whole Lenormand deck is a little like that, all no holds barred frying pan to the face type stuff. It’s on my list of stuff to check out, but I have some other oracle exploration to get out of my system first. I’ll tell you more about that when it’s closer to ready for cyberspace.

Meanwhile, back at the Magician, this is fairly blunt. It reminds me of those internet memes from around the time when the movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” was released where Wong would portal in, throw down some random weird statement and portal back out again. Today’s card is a little like that. There aren’t any circles here. No sneaking up and nabbing the point from behind like with the Turn Around or Tools of the Inner Trade post / episodes.

source: @imgur

The Magician card symbolizes transformation as much as it does manifestation. The only difference between life and magic is our preconceived expectations. The flow of time and life change and transform everything. If you are still alive, you are still magic.

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Just a reminder that the blog, podcast and socials will be on a short summer hiatus July first to July sixth. Email readings are open on the blog website throughout that time. So is the ko-fi page where memberships, the shop, commissions and virtual coffees all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. The blog and podcast are not monetized. That let’s me serve up a sip of spirit message without the taste of corporate messaging.

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

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Work Your Magic

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Conspicuous In Its Absence

When I do a reading, the first thing is to talk with you about your question, topic of concern, or you OK for an open reading. Then we shuffle the cards, put them into the layout you ordered (by email, you get a photo of the actual real life cards, by phone I’ll list them out for you, or whenever in-person readings come back, you can see them for your self.

Once the cards are ready, the first part in all formats bigger than a one-card, is what I call the “general pattern” where we look for any clues from the patter of cards taken as a whole. One of the things we look at is the number of major vs minor arcana cards. Of the minor arcana cards, we look at what suits are showing and how many of each suit are there.

“Negative space” is an idea from art and sculpture. The art-thing itself sets shapes and boundaries in and around the space it occupies. Kind of like a paper snowflake where the cut out parts are shapes too. Like the hearts in this one (Found this on a Google search. you can get the pattern at papersnowflakeart.com)

Sometimes, if three of the four minor arcana suits are showing, intuition will pull toward the suit that is missing as if it is being conspicuous in it’s absence and is sending a message by not showing up.

2020 has been a heck of a decade, and hindsight is 20/20 too. When we look back what can we learn? Surprisingly, I found one of those negative space, conspicuous in its absence kinds of messages when I looked back at the broad swath of cards that have shown up in the past year, a couple of patterns emerge. Early in the year, there was a preponderance of Pentacle cards, with their earthy, practical, pragmatic advice. The message was to not judge ourselves too harshly as we did what needed done during the early days of the covid pandemic. If it took pajama days and pandemic snacks to cope, so be it. If it took nuts-and-bolts, one foot in front of the other suiting up and masking up and putting food on the shelves….well, let’s just say the rest of us are very grateful. Then things shifted. Later in the Summer and Fall Cups cards stepped forward with a shift toward the intuitive and the spiritual. Wheels and worlds, Towers and Magicians, even the Devil card (Shadow Side in the Witches Tarot deck) put in an appearance.

But no Death card.

At least not in any prominent, repeating, attention-getting way. Given the profound tragedy the pandemic has brought and continues to bring, it is a wonder that the card didn’t show up every other day. With so many lost, this year has brought profound and permanent change to so, so many families.

Early in the year, there was a lot of zeitgiest, general-culture, general-society energies. If we look at the Death card from that perspective, then its absence makes more sense. Not intending to be callous toward the worst that has happened, if we remove tragedy from the card (as is its actual use and meaning….we all know the card actually isn’t a harbinger of literal death)

The Death card is about permanent change. When permenant change is conspicuously absent, maybe the big scary change isn’t so permenant on a large scale cultural level.

We’ll never regain and never forget those who were lost. There may be permanent scars from all of this. But in the end, in the very very long run, life just might get back to OK.

Today’s Tarot: Every Little Thing Can Be Magic

What is magic, really?

Deck pictured: Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan and Mark Evans © 2012 Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive, Woodbury, MN 55125. All rights reserved, used by permission.

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.

Post originally published 2020

YouChoose Interactive Tarot 25 July – 1Aug. 2020

Take your week, and the Tarot guidance for it into your own hands. Pick a card, right, center or left. Take your time, pause the video then restart for the reveal…or pick which ever card feels right on an impulse. Both ways work just fine.

Left: Seven of Swords. Mischief is afoot. Stay on your toes. Watch out for pranks, be kind to unintended mistakes

Center: The Magician. Create your world. Like attracts like. A shift in perception and point of view can change the world like magic

Right: King of Pentacles. Focus on the practical. Generally, energies are turning toward the spiritual and esoteric, but this week still needs a grounded and practical approach. Don’t let your head get stuck in the clouds.