In this layout, the cards reflect the current energies and suggests a good next step – what it is and what to do. Having an idea and making a plan of action can take the edge off of worry.
Page of Wands: Pages are associated with learning. Learning requires taking in information. “Get the lay of the land” comes through here. Observe, attempt gently, feel your way forward gradually.
Four of Pentacles: Sometimes this is associated with hoarding or greed. Sometimes it is about a hidden treasure, protected. However you read it, it is a conservative, cautious energy. Proceed, but with great thought and care. This isn’t the time for all out, willy-nilly, thoughtless impulse.
Start slow, you can always hit the gas once you have merged safely onto the highway. Start with a little salt in your soup, you can add more if it’s needed but you can’t take it out. Salt your metaphoric soup a little at a time.
Sage Sips is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Think of your question or the coming week. Choose your card, right or left. Pause the video if you need time. Restart to see the reveal and get your reading below.
Page of Wands: “Know Thyself” You have to know your own nature before you become at peace with it. Look for a way to nourish the light within.
The Moon: Energy cycles. Look for the larger pattern behind whatever is troubling you. The moon shines by reflected light. Your world reflects your answer.
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC, used with permission.
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Thanks for watching! Enjoy these readings? Don’t forget to like & subscribe for more. Private readings, memberships, and virtual coffee all support this blog.
Current energies: PAGE OF WANDS. There is a spring-like sense of newness that fits the local weather and season. If it isn’t spring or sunny where you are, don’t worry. Stormy winds can blow obstacles out of your way the same as they can blow them in. Welcome the winds that clear the way for a new path forward.
Next Step on the path: THREE OF CUPS. Celebrate the little things. Touch grass. Be in the world with your emotions. Touch base with friends and the little things that bring you joy.
Use the search bar to find Tarot card meanings, behind the scenes, Q&A and more in the Sage Sips blog archives.
See you at the next sip!
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund. Used with permission.
Sage Sips is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Choose your card, left or right. Pause if you want more time. Restart to see the reveal and get your reading below
Four of Cups: You can offer every drop of all you feel, but you can’t control if another person will receive it. There is emotional truths in the adage “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
Page of Wands: Sometimes life’s biggest lessons are a baptism by inner fire. Your passions will teach you. Wishing health, safety and peace for all in the Los Angeles area disaster
Don’t vibe with your collective energy card? Private distance readings are open. No appointment needed for email or paper.
PAGE OF WANDS: “Know thyself” Act natural. Do you, and the path of least resistance will nudge you in the right direction.
That isn’t to say we should melt and fade at the first sign of a challenge. There is a lot to be said for persistence. At the same time, insanity is defined as doing the same thing persistently while expecting a different result. Sometimes roadblocks are there for a reason.
As a general rule, walking in harmony with the real you is the best way to go
THREE OF WANDS: Make plans, but keep your eyes open for unexpected opportunities. Good things come to those who wait.
Another way to say it is don’t sleepwalk through this thing on your mine (today, tomorrow, the upcoming week, a relationship, a career – whatever you had on your mind when you picked your card) Observe deeply. Little details might be the bright light bulb you need to light the way.
FIVE OF WANDS: Life is never all rainbows and roses. Train. Know what to do when the inevitable bad day happens for things to be ok in the end. Charge your batteries before the storm.
A paramedic instructor once said “prepare for the emergency and the emergency goes away.” When you are ready for life’s little stresses, the stress can go away even if the situation doesn’t fundamentally change.
Thanks for watching the video and coming to the blog for a few extra thoughts.
A kitten is perfect for the Page of Wands today. The page is typically associated with youth and exuberance…we’ve talked about that new graduate vibe before.
Today the page is taking a sip from the six of cups too. There is a sense of the six’s innocence, guilelessness, utter transparency and default setting of seeing things as they are and taking them at face value.
It’s as good of a way as any to take on a routine day.
Please come back tomorrow as we look at a new Lenormand Tarot card as the Learn With Me series continues.
The Zombie Cat free reading offer is CLOSED, but you can always leave a Tarot question in the comments or “ask me anything” page to get a free Tarot answer in the blog.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee. Today: the page of wands and learning along the spiritual path.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
I’m a big fan of freethinking. I recommend it. Free your mind, question everything and all of that. Those of you who know my background know that I’m a downright expert at parachuting out of organized dogma.
On the other hand, repetition and tradition can be deeply comforting, especially in times where it feels like the world is on fire and evil is winning. For some reason this reminds me of a quote from G.K Chesterton that I found browsing brainyquote.com once. Paraphrasing quote “A warrior fights not because he hates what is before him, but because he loves what is behind him.” End quote.
Forgive me if this is all a little circular and confusing. The energy is like that some days. Sometimes it is blunt, short and to the point like a frying pan in the face. Other times it is like a connect-the-dots puzzle or a Rube Goldberg machine. Today, instead of getting to the point, the energy is circling around and nabbing it from behind.
Page cards are connected with learning. They are the first step in training to be a knight. Historically, they were young boys which brings to mind brightness, curiosity, high energy and unbridled enthusiasm. Wands are associated with fire, passions, the inner world. Today it is particularly pointing toward our inner spiritual path. Part of the circling around to the point is to think about our chosen spiritual rituals and traditions. What is it that we turn to in times of emotional crisis? What is our go-to rock and foundation….it’s almost like the page is waving hello to the Hope card and the “Anchor Rock” post as it circles around to today’s point, if there is one.
The Pew Foundation does scientific, unbiased, highly reliable surveys. Their work on the religious landscape in America is interesting to say the least. It turns out that agnostics and atheists know quite a lot about religion in general compared to most other American adults. You can read more for yourself on the Pew Foundation website HERE. This takes a step closer to today’s message.
The next step after that is the famous Socrates quote “know thyself.”
Here is where we jump the card’s message from behind and wrestle it to the ground.
The Page of Wands asks us to know the tools of our chosen spiritual path.
I’m not talking about religious indoctrination or dogma. I’m allergic to that stuff. You will never hear any of that here.
I’m talking about the rituals and symbols and acts of your personal chosen spiritual path whatever that may be. This is talking about the ideas and philosophies that feed your soul, soothes your heart, lifts you up and makes you happy. If your religion does that for you, cool. This energy is talking about spirituality, which is a very different thing. Sometimes spiritual paths are shored up by ritual and tradition, too. The page is asking us to know our motives and symbolism and rituals and habits along our spiritual path. We are being asked to know the difference between the outward social trappings of religion and the physical realm expressions of our personal inner world. The page of wands is asking us to intellectually know our spirituality in addition to deeply and mindfully experiencing it.
When you are finding your own way in or if you are eclectic and solitary by nature, it is easy to reject tradition as stifling or constricting. The page reminds us to know before we throw so to speak. Knowing something well makes it all the more fulfilling when it is right for you. By the same token, you have to know something to some degree before you can rightly reject it.
Thank you for reading and listening. As the squirrels are raving at the moment, this should be the last late night post for a while. We should be back to posting late morning U.S. eastern time most weekdays. For the moment, anyway.
This blog and podcast are not monetized. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content. There is a link in the episode description for podcast listeners. Thank you all so so so much.
See you at the next sip!
Reminder: there will be a short blog, pod, and socials hiatus the weekend of the July 4th holiday. Email readings will be OPEN throughout. You can order email readings 24/7 no appointment needed. Delivery times vary for orders placed nights (eastern time), weekends, & U.S. holidays
Starting now, you can look or listen to YouChoose Interactive Tarot. Blog posts are available as audio in the TaoCraft Tarot podcast on Anchor FM, Spotify, Stitcher and more.
If you are watching, the videos are the same as always. Choose your card, then see the reveal, just like always.
If you are listening to audio only, you still choose your card and how you apply it. The choice just comes at a different part of the process. If you can’t see or visualize your choice of card at the beginning, listen through to the end and then choose the card and description that best fits your needs. You are still interacting with the cards and still using your intuition to guide you to the parts of the discussion that is most meaningful for you today.
That being said, I’ll leave you to watch the video above.
Thanks for watching, reading AND listening. See you at the next sip!
Every day can be new year’s day. These cards show the energy around to help your fresh start happen.
Today doesn’t feel like the day for the annual tongue in cheek New Year’s reading with a bunch of rubbish predictions.
While rummaging around for easy throwback content this week, I found this old post from August 2021. Weirdly, it feels like as good of a New Year’s reading for the new calendar year in January as it did for the new school year in August.
August cards aside, I think this year is going to be palpably different from the past half dozen or so. I get the feeling it is going to be a year of…OK.
It’s OK to be ok. There is a real risk of slipping into seeing ourselves as victims and falling into a lava-pit of blame or continuing the acid-bile anger and hatred that has been so stoked over years…no, decades. It is OK if you don’t feel euphoric or joyous about 2022 considering what the world has been through and still endures. OK is OK. We could all do with a little luke warm, middle of the road cozy goldilocks zone, I think.
In 2017 it felt like a zombie apocalypse with a feeling of impending doom considering who was about to be sworn in as president. Then, after a swirl of disaster and destruction on a political level came 2020 where every intuitive’s bell was ringing red alert for one reason or another. The reading for that year gave a mental image I still clearly remember. I can still see that U.S. map with tiny tornadoes all over it followed by the mental image a hurricane on the horizon. 2021’s reading brought the mental image of peeking our head out of a mental and emotional storm cellar to survey the damage.
This year continues the narrative…but with a whole different feel. In my mind’s eye it is the same disaster scene, but the sun is brighter this time and we are all fully climbing out of the shelter, not just taking a cautious peek to see if the coast is clear. The mourning and cleaning and binding of wounds is beginning. It all hasn’t ended, but we may well be at the beginning of end instead of the end of the beginning like we were a year ago.
Mourn. Heal. Sweep up. Abide with this precious moment we have now. This isn’t a time to be paralyzed in terror of an uncertain future. This isn’t the time to dwell in resenting the past. This isn’t the time for trying to recreate a past that will never be again. This is our time to lay the foundation for a future that is right for for us, right for the times that are the here and now, not for the forces that created the disaster that has so profoundly changed us over the past 5 or 50 years. When Ghandi said to BE the change you want to see in the world, I think he meant BE as a very active verb. It is time to protect the important things that were almost lost, and time to create the important things that were neglected before. It is time to live and do and be.
It doesn’t start on New Years Day. It starts every day. Every minute. Each new breath can be a fresh start. Inhale deeply.
My New Years wish for you is that the first thing you can be is at peace with the moment we are in, even just for the moment we are in it. One moment strings into the next. The colors and surroundings and circumstances of that moment constantly changes. Any tiny moment of inner peace we can capture within all of the changes need not transform along with everything else. If we are a little careful and a little mindful, a moment of peace is a moment we can keep and revisit.
This is the post from August 2021: “Every Year Has a New One In It”
A bunch of new ones, actually.
When something is a circle, it doesn’t particularly start or stop at any one place. That is true of a year. Not only is it a circle, it is kind of an arbitrary way to chunk up time into manageable pieces. People invented the year as a way to describe time. Naturally, one of the best ways to do that is, well, nature. Seasons turn in the great circle of a year (yes, I know seasons are caused by planetary tilt and orbit which is actually an elipse, but I’m in no mood for pedantics)
Either way, when and how you mark the new year is pretty arbitrary. Celebrate it any time you like…or multiple times. Perception and emotions change in a blink. Each new moment can be a fresh start. Any day can be New Year’s Day.
This is that new school year time of year. We parents, I suspect, are a bit sentimental at the passage of time. Students, I suspect, are a mix depending on how they feel about school. I’m not sure what anyone is feeling or doing with the pandemic sized wrenches that have been thrown in everyone’s schedules.
I’m a fan of Fall, so I always look to this part of the year with a fairly high degree of anticipation. Even now that I’m no longer connected to the school year per se, I still feel a sort of anticipation. It brings the hope of cooler weather, back to business and a more predictable work flow, and of course, pumpkin spice everything. Harvest and Halloween as the mark of a new year resonates with me as much as confetti and champagne in January, maybe more so.
It felt right to do a Year Ahead reading today.
I’m still trying to think of a better name for this layout. If you have a suggestion, please, feel free to drop it in the comments. By any name – any day is a good day for a new year. All you need to do is choose your moment and begin. Two “nine” cards is particularly draws my attention to September. Whether you are connected to the American school year or not, it feels like September might be an opportune energy environment for productivity. The song “Danger Zone” comes to mind, especially the part about “overdrive” In all fairness and full disclosure, that is when I’m planning to let some schemes out into the wild, so this bit might be projection on my part…take all of that with whatever size grain of salt you’d like.
Like the year ahead layout says, let’s begin with right now.
OK – back to New Year’ Eve, in December 2021. I’m going to follow an intuitive impulse right now and re-read and re-frame these cards for the actual New Year tonight. You are welcome to watch the original reading on YouTube, on the blog, or through the link in this podcast episode description
I would say the Nine of Cups still applies right now. We are finishing up the Fall holidays and that energy still resonates as much at the end of the season where we are now as it did at the beginning when I first pulled the card. Keep it up, in other words. This seemed to be a subdued year as far as the holidays were concerned. Warm, cozy, intimate small circle gatherings, connecting with your closest of close relationships is the thing for the winter too. That’s the part to keep up more than any indulgence or raucous celebration. Even though the Fall season has ended, its energy lingers a bit.
Cups is often the suit of romance. The winter card, the Two of Cups from the August reading is still a perfect fit, even as we begin the winter instead of looking ahead to it from the early days of Fall. (If you are wondering, I’m mentally doing the arms up for-the-win, stuck-the-landing gesture. I love a good intuitive hit.) This is a season where little things means even more than usual and this is a season to lavish warmth and TLC on those you love. The Two of Cups is the card of committed, intimate relationships. It often goes with weddings, and marriage. As every jewelry commercial on television will tell you, this is a good time of year for that sort of thing too. No matter what the relationship is, by any definition, give it as much warmth, appreciation, attention and tender care as you can muster this season
For Spring, The High Priest, I ‘hear’ “Teach them anew.”
I’m glad that for whatever reason I picked up this deck for the reading back in August. This deck is my favorite for the High Priest. Right now it definitely has that shamanistic, keeper of the mythology sort of feel to it much more than the social convention, pope-ish rules and regulations energy that so often comes with the Pamela Smith and Marseilles artwork for the card. It make me feel that it might just be a mild winter and will let us turn to spring quickly and easily. It has a heady, philosophical feel about it. It has a “teach the children” feel about it. Care for the little ones. It is a time of gentleness and appreciation for nature. and following the flow of things in the process.
Full disclosure, this might be a private issue popping in, so please forgive this break from my usual rules about this kind of topic…but I feel pushed that someone else out there might benefit. My recovering fundamentalist brothers and sisters….if Easter is toxic for you, don’t do it. Consider this a cosmic permission slip to reject, avoid or run away. This isn’t a rear for spiritual law and order. This is the year for spiritual diversity and inclusion. If a particular tradition speaks to you, then yes, by all means follow it fully. If not, by all means follow whatever spiritual path that allows you to live a life of compassion and contentment and be at peace with yourself. In my mind’s eye, I see the High Priest as the Dali Lama who said “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” The spring energy pulls us to kindness and teaching it by example if nothing else.
The Nine of Swords is another card where I love Ellen Dugans interpretation and Mark Evans’ representation. Calling it a “drama queen” sort of card is just the energy for summer. Here I’m reminded of the Disney TV show “Wizards of Waverly Place” where the mom is made into a local internet celebrity with a montage of her telling her kids to “knock it off!” This card is playing the “knock it off lady” for us. There are enough real world crap to deal with without adding psychological drama on top of it all. This is a call to “knock it off” and get over ourselves and get to whatever work is at hand. It will really be time for storm clean-up during the sunny days of summer, metaphorically speaking.
The Page of Wands still fits as the year card, too. Pages are symbolic of learning. Wands are symbolic of our inner world, our inner passions. Wands are related to the element of fire.
The word “crucible” just stepped forward.
The heat and pressure of the past several years may have changed us on a deeper, more molecular level than we realized. 2022 might be a year of getting re-acquainted with ourselves. May we all find more strength and peace and health and happiness and love and kindness than we expected.
Thank you again for watching, reading and listening. I hope you will join me in 2022 for more short sip daily readings, you choose interactive readings, the new membership tier on ko-fi plus a few exciting new things that will unfold probably over the winter season. Of course, private email readings are always available with no appointment needed. Your attention and support for all of this means so much. I appreciate each of you. Thank you and Happy New Year to all.
The card deck pictured is Witches Tarot with artwork by Mark Evans, used under the permissions granted on the Llwellyn publishing website.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
You must be logged in to post a comment.