Tag: oneness

Inescapable Unity (both edges apply)

No matter how thin you cut a coin, it still has two sides.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today the emphasis is on short. As in a short week. I don’t want to do half-assed readings for you. I want to do the best Tarot reading I can for you be it here on the blog and podcast or be it in a private individual session. Usually I straight up take a couple of weeks off around this time of year. This year, I thought I could fit a little Tarot work in and around other things, but it isn’t quite working out that way. Like my new favorite internet meme says, I don’t have ducks, I don’t have rows, I have squirrels and they are hosting a rave. Long story short, E-mail Tarot readings are open, but the blog, podcast and social media will be on a short hiatus from now until June 27, 2022 and again over the weekend of July 4. After that it is right back to the usual squirrel rave playlist.

With that announcement out of my system, let’s get to today’s card, the two of swords.

Swords are associated with the mind, intellect and the element of air. They are a symbol of power and authority, society and culture too. Swords were the weapons of war for a broad swath of human history. If we take a more contemporary, relational point of view of the suit of swords they can symbolize our relationship with authority, and with the bigger definitions of society; your nationality, your ethnicity, your religion, your political affiliation. Sometimes swords carry a thread of Hierophant or Pope type energy. Social conventions are a minor background energy today.

More often than not, Tarot is intensely personal. It isn’t often that a spirit or energy message connects to society at large. Today’s card, however, is reminding us that we are never not connected to it. We are never not connected to anything. We are never not connected to everything.

The two aspects of this card are interesting. Two cards vary in theme from suit to suit. Two of pentacles is the essence of balance and has a similar vibe to Temperance in the major arcana. Two of cups is about committed one to one emotion, marriage and long term relationships. Two of wands is about watching, hope and preparation within an individual. The two of swords speaks to mental state, things like indecision, being of two minds about something, or somehow in an unwinnable situation with equal good and bad consequences…something that cuts like a double edged sword as the saying goes

In her book Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao, Diane Morgan interprets the two of swords as mystical unity.

However sharp or dull the edges of a sword may be, they are still a part of the same sword. Even if you split a sword down the middle, you get more edges, each connected to its mate.

We are three dimensional beings. There is no one side to anything. As strongly as the two of pentacles points a dynamic balancing dualities, the two of swords points to an inescapable unity. No matter how thin you slice a coin it always has two sides. You can’t deny the existence of the sword’s other edge, the coin’s other side – or your many sides either. Sometimes you just have to choose which edge you use, which side of the coin to show, and which facet of you to that you use to interface with the rest of culture or or your larger social groups. Whatever side you choose to show, the other sides of you, even the sides you may not like so much, still exist.

It is a dangerous thing to ignore one side of sword when all the edges apply.

One of those edges is feeling like it is useless to choose or stop caring about important decisions. Remember…whatever sad, angry, terrifying thing makes you want to give up, you are equally connected to happy, kind, supportive, comfortable things. Out there, somewhere in the universe, in there somewhere on a bone deep molecular level, there is a connection to love and support. You are star stuff, and many people love stars.

The edges may cut, but the center connects.

Thank you so much for reading and listening! Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always appreciated!

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Helpful links are in the episode description for podcast listeners.

See you in a few days at the next sip.

Part of it All

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today The Alleyman, a Carl Sagan quote, and the Seven of Bells Tarot Card

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the seven of bells from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck and originally from the Floetner deck. The Alleyman’s Tarot is used with the permission of its creator Seven Dane Asmund. To learn more about Seven’s work and what is rapidly becoming my new favorite deck please visit the link below or in the podcast episode description. Yesterday, I posted a short first impression of the deck on the blog. I’ll put a link to that in the podcast description as well.

As an exercise in learning the deck, I’d like to use it for our daily short sip readings. I’ll give you my first impression purely intuitive reading from the card and then I’ll go to the guidebook written meaning and let you decide which resonates more for you on whatever given day you read or listen to this. To take a phrase from the Alleyman Podcast – it will be a collaboration, with the Alleyman’s blessing.

Not to mention that fits my lazy girl M.O. – I won’t have take the time to read the guidebook ahead of these first look. Doing an intuition-only first-look reading like this before reading the guide book page only goes to show how readable this deck and this deck’s concept really is.

When I drew this card, my attention was drawn to the central figure and the similarity between the figure’s texture and the rocks and surrounding ground. It reminded me of the Taoist principle that we are an inseparable part of the larger whole. Carl Sagan said that the Cosmos is “all that is or was or ever will be.”

That. Includes. Us.

Just like the cliche joke about the Dali Lama asing the hotdog salesman in New York to make him one with everything.

We are integral part of our life and circumstances. Because of that deep connection, we can impact it just as it impacts us in that eternal dance of cause and effect.

The notebook talks about this card representing a feeling of being trapped by circumstance and expectations, quote “you have been made into something other people need you to be” end quote. The guidebook agrees that you can shake off this dried-mud entrapment. You can return to feeling more yourself if you quote “find what made you this way and confront it” end quote.

To put it all together, it may be a sudden change or move at a glacial pace, but we can use our deep interconnectedness with the universe and we can use cause and effect to break free of what others expect of us and begin to be true to our expectations of ourselves instead.

Thank you so much for reading, watching and listening. There are companion video shorts on YouTube that show the Short Sip cards being drawn. Neither the videos or the blogcast are monetized so they rely on your support. Purchases on the blog website and monthly memberships through ko-fi all contribute toward creating this (almost) daily Tarot content.

Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated.

See you at the next sip.

For more information about The Alleyman’s Tarot and Seven Dane Asmund’s other work please visit Publishing Goblin, llc