Tag: oracle dice

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice Wrap Up Reading

wrapping up the first ever “learn with me” series with an Oracle Dice reading

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This has been a learning experience for me – for you, too, I hope.

I think there is more to take away from this than just dice & image meanings.

This series has been a proof of concept experience: the REAL oracle is our human intuition. Tools and amplifiers like dice, cards, tea leaves, charms, chicken bones or whatever are truly just that. These things and techniques are portals, energizers and amplifiers that help us to access and communicate our own innate intuition and psychic ability better. Because they have a similar function in support of our innate intuition, different oracles can be learned and used in similar ways. There is a great deal of overlap on the energy / intuitive level despite surface differences.

Consciousness and the human experience is expansive and too enormous for any one oracle to encapsulate everything for everyone. The exponential combinations of a handful of cards or dice come close. There are 138 sides in the dice set, rolling 22 dice – if you calculate it out, you get a number so big I don’t even know how to name it. Still, we can learn to work within that enormity and use these intuition helpers in the same way we learn anything. Learning an oracle tool can be logical, methodical and intuitive all at the same time.

We’ve dug down through the layers starting with the individual images on the dice, the meanings associated with the individual dice cubes. In the last post, we talked about connecting all of those things.

The foundation goes full circle. Once you dig down to the nitty-gritty and build up all of the layers of meaning, you have to knit it all together. Think of language – it’s no coincidence we call these things readings. We’ve learned words (side images) and we’ve learned the syntax and grammar (dice, lord cards) now it’s time to make some sentences. It’s time to take this whole project and make it make sense and be use-able. A reading takes all of the digging and layerering and glues it all together into some sort of cohesive whole. THAT is the hardest part. The level of difficulty increases exponentially with each moving part in a reading and the trillions of potential combinations in the case of a 22 dice roll. That is why genuine psychics still exist – anyone can learn to do this, but not everyone has the knack or desire to do all of that digging and layering and gluing. If you pay for an authentic professional reading, you are getting real artistry and skill.

This is also why I cap my Tarot layouts at 7 cards. Larger layouts, like the Celtic Cross or a full 22 dice throw are certainly DO-able, I just find them unwieldy, potentially contradictory and just plain overkill. Why use a chainsaw when all you need is a pair of scissors?

Here is how I’m going to do this…it might not 100% align with the method described in the guide book, but I’m taking artistic liberty since I’m only using a portion of the dice instead of the full roll described.

Since the reading cloth image is a circle, and the dice can potentially orient in any direction of those 365 degrees, I’m going to read the image as-is, no consideration to reversals as you would in Tarot when the cards are all aligned along a single axis.

The dice on the “core” area hold more immediate importance and strength compared to the dice in the outer areas. You all know how I feel about predictions, so tying this to time just doesn’t work for me. I used this side of the reading cloth because as I was setting up for the video, this side felt most right – perhaps most needed by the most people of those who watch and read this. Rather than past, present, future and fated, I think of this in terms of strength of the energy’s influence: Core is the strongest then fated, future, present and past in descending order of influence. Yes, that is very much like the fading-current-growing energy card positions that I wrote into my Tarot layout. I’ve used it for years, and it. Just. Works. It makes sense to continue that proven foundation in this new oracle method.

Since all of the dice fell in the main center circle, that’s as far as I’ll take it. The guidebook talks about how to handle dice on the outer portions of the reading cloth or that fall off of the cloth or table altogether. I leave that for you to figure out if you are interested in getting a set of dice and reading for yourself.

Of the two dice that fell in the core circle, the slightly higher one, relative to where I’m sitting, most catches my attention. It is the grey relations dice on the “alone” face. It shows a single person in a bubble.

The guide book divides the interpretation of any die between when the die lands in the core and when it is elsewhere. In the core, the “alone” face speaks to the querent being the sole focus of the reading (which is my policy for all readings anyway.) This interpretation is a validation for me of something that has been niggling at me for the past few posts – this really is an intensely focused, intimate, personal, individual oracle. This oracle tool isn’t well suited to the at-large collective energy readings of the type we do here with Tarot cards. This is a fantastic tool and technique, but for private readings, not blog readings.

The other core is the action die. When we first rolled it, we saw the “judgment” face with scales and a lot of justice energy. This is the “sacrifice” face, intended (especially at the core) to represent something large and difficult that is being released or a big sacrifice that was made to gain something currently in the querent’s life. Seven Dane Asmund cautions that it “is likely to be a gut wrenching reading. Be prepared.”

Next in level of intensity, we have two dice in the “fated” area. The one on the right catches my attention the most of the two. That is the Elements die on the “wind” face and it relates to a fickle, difficult or changeable person or situation. I get an eight of wands sort of energy here – things up in the air, out of our control, and it is a matter of waiting to see where things land before we can assess and react.

The other high energy “fated” die is the Goblin on the “obsession” face. The guidebook mentions how this die is very often modified or characterized by nearby dice. In this case, the fickle, changeable, difficult, up in the air,beyond reach, not under our control thing has been top of mind, perhaps too much. Taken together with the sacrifice die face – we get a “let it go” message.

The next tier of energy, “present” gives us the same face of the Summer die that we first saw, “gain.” This die is off alone and gives a stand-alone vibe. It feels simple and good and an omen of good fortune – this is a good energy time for paying attention to your creativity and livelihood, especially if the two intersect somehow. All good vibes with that one.

The lowest energy brings the obstacles dice on the emergence face which edges out the Alley die and its “scavenge” face which feels very much on its way out of the door. Of those two the energy definitely lies with the “obstacles” die and its “emergence” image.

The image depicts escape from obstacles, or from a mental or emotional trap. This “getting unstuck” feeling resonates with Hanged Man in reverse in Tarot. There is also a similarity to the five of swords in Tarot with this “overcoming obstacles” energy, especially as Matt Evans drew the five of swords for the Witches Tarot deck. There is also a bit of the Queen of Swords in the way the die relates to “recognizing your power in the moment and rising up beyond what has kept you from feeling free” as the oracle author puts it.

Being in this low key position on the cloth, whether you look at it as time related or not, reminds us that breaking free, picking up the mantle of our power, living free and true to ourselves is not a one time event but instead is an ongoing process.

And there if feels like the energy steps back bringing this reading to a conclusion.

Once again, many thanks to Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC for permission to use his excellent Tarot, dice and oracle cards in this blog and associated social media.

In a few weeks we’ll start a new “learn with me” series looking at the Lenormand Tarot. I’ll be using the Healing Light Lenomand deck under the “free teaching” permissions granted by the publisher https://www.llewellyn.com/about/permissions_tarot.php

Newletter / digest will be on Medium later today. No “weekend shif” Friday post this week. Next up, it seems is next week’s energy path reading.

Thank you so much for reading today and following along with this first “learn with me” series.

Any likes, blog subscriptions (it’s free! Just enter your email in the right column or a the bottom of the mobile page) social media follows (@sagewordstarot) like, shares and comments are all much appreciated!

See you at the next sip!

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice & The Accuser

Sometimes that banging you hear is obstacles being removed.

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Oracle Dice & cards used with permission Publishing Goblin LLC. Card art by czarfunkle

It’s called a lithotripter.

Life takes you to some pretty strange places. Writing a blog post comparing an oracle card to a high end medical device was not on my bingo card for today, but here we are. That odd combination is what the collective energy – “spirit” if you will – is using to communicate today.

When we first rolled – drew – something – this die to be one of the seven learning dice, the single face we rolled was “ruin.”

It has all of the obvious parallels with Tarot’s Tower card.

When I first saw the Lord Card for the obstacle die, it was of those “I got nothin'” moments, so naturally I went to the source material, the guidebook, for inspiration. The moral of that story is you won’t always be able to read every little thing purely intuitively. I’m only talking about reading for yourself, I do NOT teach you to read for other people, ever. But that’s a topic for another day. Long story short, when you get nothing intuitively from a card or dice or whatever oracle you are using, it is perfectly valid to combine the silent oracle whatever-it-is (in this case the card/die combo) with other inspiration (the room around you, the song on the radio, the guide book, some other guidebook – anything can help.)

One aspect of the card speaks of wrongful accusations, anything from the dog ate my homework blame dodging to being the chosen fall-guy, the one rejected and reviled by those whom the fall-guy has faithfully served, and maybe still serves.

I get a black sheep of the family vibe there.

Rather than the bringer of underserved accusations and derision, the Accuser can also be the bringer of obstacles. That can be experienced as the doom, gloom, destruction and chaos of the Tower and Devil cards. There is, however, another layer of meaning proposed.

The most important lessons are sometimes learned the hard way, and in doing so that removes self-imposed obstacles and clears the way to better things.

The accuser, as with light-bringer Lucifer, challenges us and blocks us to show us our weaknesses, our ignorance, our undue attachments.

Or, as the adage goes, that which doesn’t kill us can make us stronger.

The Accuser bangs at us and challenges us – but maybe, just maybe, all that banging and destruction and chaos is the sound of obstacles being removed.

A lithotripter uses shock waves to break up a harmful kidney stones into small enough pieces that it can be passed harmlessly out of the body by the urinary system. The kidney stone is crushed and essentially destroyed. Sudden destruction removes the blockage and makes things better in a literal way.

The same is true of The Accuser’s energy. Yes, absolutely, sometimes The Devil, The Tower or The Accuser is a storm warning for us, asking us to take action because bad stuff happens in life and forewarned is forearmed.

Other times, obstacles come our way to make us stronger (spiritual weight lifting?) For we humans, the hard way is the only way we learn some lessons.

On occasion, if we learn well, that banging we hear is actually the sound of obstacles being destroyed instead of our impending doom.

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice, Collector of Selves part 1

Learn with me: Oracle Dice continues. Now that we have our 7 learning dice, we add another layer of meaning.

I’m presenting and learning the dice the same way that I’ve studied Tarot over the years for two basic reasons. First, I know this methodology works. I’ve used it. Been there and done that. Second, by learning the dice with me you can also get a behind the scenes peek into reading Tarot at the same time. There are parallels here. The oracle creator has created Tarot decks. Really good ones. If you’ve read this blog for a hot minute you know how much I like the Alleyman Tarot. I just bought the guidebook to his previous deck the Normal Tarot because it has the best cover art of any Tarot book ever – but more on that another day.

The oracle dice works so well with this method of learning because it was created by hands familiar with Tarot. The dice have all the depth and insight and use-ability of a 138 card Tarot deck.

Tarot is more than memorizing individual card meanings. There are layers, complexities and nuances. In the past it was called gifted. Psychic gifts are really more a matter of skill and practice. It’s like sports. Almost anyone can learn to play a sport – tennis for example. If someone has a natural gift for tennis, they are never going to get anywhere with it unless they learn the rules and swing a racket. Someone with no natural talent whatsoever can play tennis with learning and practice. The person who put in the time and work and practice would easily beat a person with natural talent who was playing their first game. Combine a small seed of Talent with work and practice over time – that can seem like some sort of special gift. No all of us can make it to Wimbledon, but any of us can certainly bang a ball around at the local park.

This series, this blog can’t teach Wimbledon level Tarot reading. It can’t teach you to read for other people, but you can learn some banging DIY Tarot reading for yourself.

But it take time, and blogging unfolds at a different pace. We could do this face by face together and move on to the next thing four months from now.

I don’t think you need that.

You’ve seen how this works.

Hurl dice at the table, get your hunches, mental images and intuitions about it. Combine that with the reference book and there you have it.

Now we are going to add another layer to it.

Seven Dane Asmund has given each dice its own topic and lord card. The topic is analogous to the the suit in the Tarot deck as I see it. Instead of the RWS Tarot’s four minor arcana suits with 14 cards each and the 22 card major arcana, we have basically 22 suits with six ‘cards’ each. In this second edition of the dice, the nuance is expanded and supplemented with the Lords of the Dice cards. The dice’s “lord” is a sort of symbolic spirit guide or guardian for that dice. The Lord card serves a similar purpose to the artwork on the ace cards of Tarot’s suits. The Ace in Tarot holds the core essence of the suit. By the same token, the lord card gives us insight into the essence of the individual die.

Interestingly, the influence flows both ways. After this, the ace cards feel even more important than they did before. I never thought of them as being potential guides and guardians before. But it works, at least for the number cards. The court cards in Tarot (page, knight, queen and king) have their own thing going on. That too, is a conversation for another day.

But that sets us up for the next little series within the series. We’ve looked at individual dice faces and at the same time chosen our seven learning dice out of the set of 22. Now instead of face by face, we’ll go die by die and look at each dice’s topic and lord card.

There really isn’t a good way to be very random about this, so that makes the active video pretty boring. For this next section of posts, I’ll be working from static photos of each die with its card. For YouTube, I’ll just share the tictok instead of filming the dice roll. It’s just more visually interesting at this point.

Please join me tomorrow when we pick up the “Collector of Selves” in more detail in part 2.

video / photo by the author of Publishing Goblin’s Oracle dice second edition, used with permission.

Oracle Dice 5

A big thank you to alert reader L.K. who caught that the dice from yesterday’s Learn With Me post was hard to see because of the video text!

See? I don’t bite. The comments are open, let me know whatever questions or feedback you have. Then I’ll post answers and make adjustments so that Sage Sips can be as relevant and useful as possible.

Ask me anything! Get an answer here! In true Zombie Cat style, all answers are 100% guaranteed to contain words!

Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice are used with permission by Publishing Goblin, LLC

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Learn With Me: Oracle Dice 4

Psychic ability, intuition, “weird ass mystical shit” as the one Alleyman Tarot card calls it – whatever you name it, it’s a normal human thing. It’s a sense, like warmth or sight or hearing. In my experience, that psychic intuition exists as a mental echo of the five physical senses.

That is where we get the word clairvoyance. It means “clear vision.” There is a “clair” for each sense. The vast majority of the time my intuition works with mental images or sounds, songs and words (clairaudience.) I always explain in a new private reading that is what I mean when I say “see” for the mental images and “hear” when the intuition comes to mind as words or songs.

I love it when intuition works with popular songs, TV and music. It is a shared experience for a lot of people so it is an easy way to communicate a concept.

I’m a bit of a foodie, and I’ve studied a little aromatherapy, which has opened taste and smell as an intuitive prompts, but they much less common than the other two.

Today we went straight to the classic rock radio station. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was the very first thing that came to mind when I saw today’s dice image. That was quickly followed by a snippet of The Doors that says “break on through to the other side.”

I didn’t have old 60’s (or was it early 70s) classic rock on my bingo card for today, but there it is. If you don’t know the songs I’m not surprised. I only know the Doors from snippets in movies and TV and The Wall was Junior High at the latest.

Ugh…I just realized that I was not only alive but in second grade when friggen’ Dark Side of the Moon was released. Damn. I’ve earned the GenX Tarot Xpert title just by kicking around this long.

Back to the dice. Put the image and the intuitive “wall” and “break through” prompts, I would read this image as being about mental blocks, overcoming challenges. The Ten of Wands comes to mind as a Tarot analogy. Granted with over 90 dice images, there may not be a good Tarot analogy for each one, but with 78 Cards in the Tarot deck, there is bound to be overlap.

When you are very first learning any oracle at all, you may not dial into intuitive sense or impressions right away like this. It comes with practice and that is exactly what we are doing here. Let’s use a brick wall as an analogy. Walls don’t just spontaneously appear out of nothing. They are assembled, board by board, sheet of drywall by sheet of drywall, brick by brick. Not every brick is going to trigger a spontaneous impression. That’s when you go to the guide book. That’s why it is there. Two heads are better than one. Start with the guide book, then add your own impression to get your message for the day.

Day after day, brick after brick. Next thing you know you can tap right into your own psychic skills and read dice like a champ.

OK – that being said, let’s go see how far I am from Seven’s original intent for the dice.

And in case you are wondering, no I’m not looking ahead. I did this when my copy of the Alleyman Tarot first arrived. I’d read the card then go to the guidebook and I wound up even more head over heels for the deck than I thought I’d be.

What I’m trying to say here is don’t get your underwear in a bunch over which comes first. It doesn’t matter if you go right to the guide book then add the impressions the dice plus guidebook inspires OR start with your own impressions and go to the guidebook to expand them and maybe spark some more. What matters is engaging with your intuition. All the dice and cards and guidebooks are here to help that process. All of those things “Pump Up the Volume” on your intuition if you want to throw some late 80s in with the 60s and 70s music references.

To the guide book:

The whole cube is the die of obstacles. No surprise there. The name of this individual face is “Ruin.” But wouldn’t you know it? I have it exactly upside down in the video. I don’t get the feeling there is any significance to that, as there might be with a reversed Tarot card. That is just me not knowing the dice.

Turned upright, it is easy to see the classic Tower image from the Tarot with the bolt of lightning and falling bodies. But there is a little more to this. This is about “calamity” as much as the suddenness. Seven writes it as being an irreversible life changing event…so shades of the Death and Devil card to go with the Tower card.

Which means little if you aren’t a Tarot card reader…we are here to talk about the dice.

So sudden, life altering disaster.

It happens to the best of us.

It happens to all of us.

And life altering chaos and disaster is a wall of sorts. How do you get back to living when your old life is no longer an option? How do you move past the pain and chaos?

The thing that caught my attention was Mr. Asmund’s reminder that it is ok to feel the pain of the things in life that hurt us. Numb isn’t necessarily better.

Pain is important. Both physically and emotionally it alerts that something is wrong. It lets us know when attention is needed, possibly action too.

Pain and loss and irrevocable change is inevitable during the course of a lifetime. But that doesn’t mean that this dice or any of those Tarot cards are predicting imminent disaster for you any time soon. Don’t talk yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead allow this to be a gentle reminder.

If disaster has happened, then you can continue, brick by brick, to recover. Things may never be the same, but they can be made better. You survived.

If disaster is happening now…why are you reading this? Go do what needs done. Take care of yourself and matters at hand.

If you are ok now, drink it in. Savor it for as long as it lasts. Right now, this present moment is precious.

Momento mori. Momento vivere.

Remember all things die. Then go, remember to live.

On that blissful note…

Thank you for reading.

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*Publishing Goblin Oracle Dice used with permission of Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC

Learn With Me: Oracle Dice #3

Sage Sips is intuition and contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today we continue to explore the Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice

Albert Einstein famously said that “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

That is as true of intuition and esoterica as it is of physics.

78 Tarot cards is daunting enough to learn. 22 dice multiplied by six faces each – no, wait – the one is a D12 so that is like a bonus – 23 times 6 is 138. And that’s just the symbols. I’ve been reading Tarot for 30 years and 138 new symbols and goodness knows how many combinations – I feel a little boggled by the whole thing.

Maybe that is just my tendency to overthink a little bit. There are reasons why I don’t use the Celtic Cross or any other larger layouts. Other readers – that’s up to them – but for me, I’m with Einstein. Simplicity and clarity is the key. We come to oracles to gain clarity. Oracles distill the human experience into a finite number of vague but potent symbols.

Oracle help us un-boggle life. So let’s un-boggle this new oracle. I’m feeling more teacher-ish than student-ish about this. I’ve done my student work with other oracles. Now it’s my turn to be the professor and here is our lesson plan:

Each post we’ll “pull” a new dice, by randomly jiggling it out of the pouch which I gave a good shake right before I started the lofi one handed video that you see above. The dice will be put in a row above the symbol for the day so there are no repeating dice over the next several weeks. When we have 7 of these randomly selected dice, we’ll work through each of them one side at a time until we’ve looked at all the faces of all the dice.

Then we’ll use that abbreviated set of 7 dice to explore tossing multiples dice at a time, finally putting all seven onto the reading cloth that came with the dice. Ultimately I’d like to try a reading or two hurling the whole 22 dice set at the reading cloth and see what we come up with.

Daunting? Not really when you go step by step. Simple? Yes, for the same reason. Brilliantly adaptable, customizable oracle tool? Absolutely.

Now on to today’s symbol, “The Scavenger” face from “The Alleyman” dice. (Used with permission of Publishing Goblin LLC)