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THE SNAKE: Stay quiet and camouflaged, use logic and observation to learn who you can trust – or not.
THE DOG: Someone trustworthy is near. Find them, and be as good of a friend to them as they are to you. The sum will be greater than the parts for all concerned.
If your individual intuition is the engine that drives a Tarot reading, symbolism is the steering wheel.
Like a car in Pennsylvania during pothole season, it’s very easy for that steering to get out of alignment. Symbolism is very influenced by culture and time and has to be kept in context. It has to be in alignment with the reader and the sitter and the intuitive vibe of the reading.
Take the color black, for example.
For some, black is seen as aligned with “evil.” In western traditions black has been associated with death, funerals and mourning, but also with evening elegance and fashion, men’s tuxedos for example.
In Japan, novice monks and many lay people wear black as a symbol of their dedication to practice and as a symbol of community.
The symbolism for snakes is just as varied. Sometimes they are seen as symbolizing lies or deception as in the Christian garden of Eden myth or someone being a “snake in the grass” in an old western movie.
In Chinese cultures, snakes are associated with wisdom, intelligence, charm and grace. In many places they are connected to personal growth and transformation through their ability to shed their old skin as they grow.
Dogs on the other hand, are all just good bois and gurls. How an individual person treat dogs and other small animal is the tell here more than any broad cultural reference. If a dog likes you, you must be OK. If you like dogs, there must be some kindness in your heart. Dogs symbolize great loyalty and deep friendship almost everywhere. Only after they have been through horrors do they devolve into aggression and threat.
If you chose the snake card, beware deception – use observation, cleverness and intellect to understand who to trust. Take inspiration for the snake to adapt and transform yourself.
If you chose the dog card, know others by their proven trustworthiness and kindness. Be a friend, find a friend, hold on to your friends.
Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler, copyright 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.
Weekend Oracle isn’t just for weekends because it doesn’t predict any period of time. Like the “week ahead” readings, it is just a read or your energy environment for the next few days. Weekends tend to be 2 or 3 days, so think of this as being the energy you will be dealing with or the energetic opportunity that is most dominant for the next 2-3 days.
They tend to have an advice tone: “This is your best chance to…” or “Now is a great time to….” sort of feeling. Think of it as a read of what the energy around you will support the best right now.
Drawn into the Dark Corners of the World: The card name is pretty much the reading. No one is perfect. No one is complete without their imperfections. Knowing and accepting your shadow side can give a sense of peace and contentment that can be found no other way.
Many traditions teach this idea around the world. In Japan, the philosophy and aesthetic of wabi sabi tells of the beauty in imperfection. The psychology of Carl Jung speaks of our shadow, the unconscious mind. Magickal and pagan traditions actively face this kind of shadow work as well.
This card is a call to look for what you typically do not see. Learn from where and how you give your precious attention. Look for, listen to, and learn from the dark corners. Be open with all due discernment to the places you wouldn’t ordinarily expect to find wisdom. You might be surprised at the gifts such places give.
Deck: Alleyway Oracle by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission, Publishing Goblin LLC
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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.
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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
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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.
Pithy & Potent: A Tarot card for the day distilled down into a sentence or two.
Ask Me Anything: Submit a question by email or in the comments & I’ll answer in the blog, unless it’s spam or obnoxious or something. I have a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
It takes a hot, bright afternoon to make you really appreciate the cool shade of a tree, or a freezing night to make you appreciate the glowing warmth of a space heater.
As much as Tarot and Tarot readings are associated with western witchcraft, Taoist philosophy pops up a great deal, especially for a Tarot reader who has an affinity for Taoism like I do.
Sure, you could argue that this is a process of subjective confirmation bias, but I’m not the only one to find overlap between Taoism and Tarot, Reiki and Magick, East and West.
Diane Morgan’s Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao was one of my earliest Tarot influences. Christopher Penczak’s Magick of Reiki landed right lives right beside it, both squarely in the middle of my wheelhouse. I live in the liminal venn diagram space where Taoism, Tarot, Reiki and Magick all meet.
That eclectic, and often solitary mental space can have it’s drama.
Everybody loses their keys, spills their milk, or has some such tiny dramas in their life. It’s normal. That is also where the Three of Swords is pointing today.
The Three of Swords doesn’t have the darkest or most dire looking artwork. Usually it shows three swords stabbing something…more often than not a heart shape…but the heart is red and the background is seldom as literally black and dark as a death, devil, or 10 of swords cards.
Most of the meanings and keywords associated with the Three of Swords are warnings and cautions. It always feels like drama or complications from outside of ourselves. But for all of the heartbreak and betrayal keywords that go with this card, the connection to Taoist philosophy steps forward strongly today. It has to do with everything defining – and being defined by – its opposite. We find this concept in chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching, here in a public domain translation by J.H. McDonald.
“When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created. When people see things as good, evil is created. Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other. Fore and aft follow each other.”
Basically this is a message of encouragement, and a melange of hanging on and letting go all at once. Let go of that which has become toxic and harmful to make room for the good. Hang on through the dark times because that persistence will make the light all the more beautiful when it comes.
Darkness defines the edges of the light. Light defines the edges of the darkness. Without that contrast we can’t see anything at all.
Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and let me which you like better: a card-for-today format or the three cards for the week and weekend revisit format. I’m leaning toward our old friend, the daily meditation Tarot readings. It’s like comfort food and personal growth all wrapped up in one thing.
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I’ve said it many times. Other Tarot readers have been saying it lately too, so there must be something in the collective energy bringing it up.
There is magick in the mundane.
And by virtue of its ubiquitous everywhere-ness, magick IS mundane.
Magick is anywhere you are willing to shift your preconceived notions out of the way and allow yourself to experience it, to live it.
Western magickal tradition and Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Zen have tremendous overlap. They are all a way of going about your day to day, mundane life.
Sigmund Freud said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – sometimes things are just exactly what they seem to be.
Other times they are the magick in disguise.
Sometimes a yellow spot is a yellow spot, and sometimes it contains the sun.
Like Schrodinger’s Cat anything and everything holds the potential for either and both.
Whether a thing or experience is pure wonder or comfortably, delightfully commonplace is up to you. That same thing or experience might be the exact opposite for the next person who comes along.
The Magician card is about just this sort of thing. It is about the ability to manifest and transform. One of the magician’s most powerful tools is a shift in personal, internal perception.
The Magician was our growing energy card a few days ago. It still feels appropriate for this weekend. Whatever the weekend holds, may you be able to transform it into just the weekend you need.
On Monday we’ll draw another three week-ahead cards. See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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