pandemic – Page 3 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

The Craziest Diamond

I’ve been an anime fan since Kimba the White Lion reruns circa 1970.

My daughter is an anime fan too (so proud!) She and I have been watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. We’ve made it to season 4 “Diamond Is Unbreakable.” It would take an entire blog to begin to explain this behemoth of a story line, but let’s just say a “stand” is like the personification of a superpower. “Shining Diamond” (the name is a reference to the Pink Floyd song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”) has a superpower where the things it hits, attacks or destroys reassembles to a changed condition that is better than the original…or it can directly heal wounds and injuries inflicted by others.

What if this ability is an analogy for one possible silver lining in all of this? I’ve been talking with friends and clients about how these pandemic times have been affecting energy sensitive people. What if one silver thread in this terrible dark cloud is a re-alignment on a spiritual or energetic level, akin to Shining Diamond’s healing objects or people who were previously torn apart?

What if our social connections are being stretched thin, even being smashed to bits in order for them to be put together into something new and better? What if we are being separated to make room for new relationships that resonate with our spiritual growth and our hearts rather than social connections of convenience?

It is a common thing for friendships to fade during times of spiritual growth and evolution, especially for people in their 20s and 30s. Old friends drift apart (or blow apart) and new, more attuned connections fill the space left behind. What if this is happening on a global cultural scale? What if we are being pummeled apart in order to be reassembled along like-minded spiritual strata? What if we are being blown out of our old tribes in order to find the tribe that matches our hearts rather than our habits?

I’m not saying that is what is actually happening, but it is an intriguing thought experiment, don’t you think?

There is nothing like a little social distance and time alone to put you face to face with your own heart and mind. Yogis, gurus, monks, shamen and spiritual people of every tradition have deliberately sought this kind of isolation. Stay home orders and social distancing has put us all on our own little mountaintop spiritual retreat. Or it should. It says something tragic about the inner peace of those who can’t make some adjustment at the cost of human lives.

For the fortunate, who have food, shelter, a job to do from home…for those, this is a gift. If, under those fortunate circumstances, “social distancing” is uncomfortable for you, could it be because you are uncomfortable with yourself? If you are uncomfortable in your own company, this is an ideal time to figure out why.

When you are good with you, it is a lot easier to be OK with other people. The popular thing on social media among the uber-positive happy people is to advocate for “self-love”. That seems strong. Why not aim for a little self-OK first? Self-love flirts a little too much with narcissism for my taste. Self-acceptance seems more real to me.

The first step to being OK with others is to be OK with yourself. We are one. We are all connected. Bigotry, hatred and intolerance are twisted forms of self-loathing.

A little time apart might help that. It’s like we are being hit full force by Shining Diamond. We are being blown apart to give us the opportunity to reassemble healed.

Today’s Tarot: Bend Don’t Break

It’s still your choice, even on days where it feels like one card is the right thing to do. It’s still your choice whether you would like use this card as a prompt for your own DIY reading or scroll down to the one I’ve written below…or both.

It may not be one of our run on coins cards, but The Fool, reversed, has pandemic advice all over it.

Begin a new journey? Nope – stay your backside at home.

Begin an inner journey? Absolutely! But that is where the reversal comes in. Mr. Andrews describes the cayote on the card as one of the most vlever and adaptable animals. So a reversal here begs the question of where and how you are having problems adapting. Taoist philosophy has a similar idea. If you don’t bend, you could break. Living beings are supple, bendable. Life wants to be clever and adaptable like cayote in order to stay that way. Dead things are rigid, stiff, unbending, brittle, breakable.

This isn’t over. The old ways have to change, else death may follow. Yes, you have to do things differently and think about things differently now. It bests the alternative. Bending is far better than breaking.

Stay safe, stay home. Protect the ones who go to work to protect you by staying home for them.

YouChoose: free Tarot reading four ways

This pandemic is a thing, isn’t it?

Like we talked about last time in “I kinda like it in here. It’s private” the general energies out there have just been buzzing. There is real things to be anxious worried and fearful about, so no surprise the feeling of the time is enough to set nerves on edge in addition to everything else. It is OK if things are pushing your buttons a little bit. Time alone can be maddening or it can be a spiritual retreat, a Tarot reading can be an epiphany or it can be a few minutes of diversion. It is all your choice. You have to do what is right for you. It’s easier to love others when you can love yourself too.

Speaking of which, I loooove doing written email Tarot readings. Always have. I’m perfectly content to sit here in my comfy chair with a cuppa joe and my fuzzy bunny slippers and read Tarot all day long. Now it has the added benefit of being virus fee and stay at home compliant.

It is a tough time for everyone. I don’t have much to offer except this:

Free One card readings HERE. Take your pick between handwritten, typed and video. No appointment needed but only available through the contact form on the special offers page.

Also on the special offers page: Zombie Cat is back with his usual snark, lame humor and a HUGE price reduction. Get three cards for the price of one.

Free Reiki HERE.

All distance email readings have been price reduced until the end of April.

Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay home. (and wash your hands)

“I kinda like it in here. It’s private.”

Mythbusters was on TV. I needed that.

One of my many, many favorite moments from the show is the time when Jamie was wearing a silver fire suit. You couldn’t see see him through the face mask at all, only hear him deadpanning “I kinda like it in here. It’s private.”

Here is why that moment comes to mind:

If you work with energy, intuition or do professional readings there are times when you need a mental fire suit.

If you want a real deal, deep dive, time tested and reliable resource on the topic, go get yourself a copy of “Psychic Protection” by Ted Andrews. It is far and away the best resource I’ve ever read about healthy psychic work, bar none. But for the purposes of our little blog post, there are two basic concepts I want to focus on: Empathic sensitivity and Zeitgeist sensitivity or energy resonance.

As I understand it, empaths feel other people’s emotions as if they were their own. The boundary between their own true feelings and the feelings of other people is often thin, blurry, or difficult to find. Very sensitive empaths regulate this through proximity. They know (or can learn) their boundaries and respect their limits. When emotional levels become too intense or overwhelming they exit the situation. Highly sensitive empaths are careful where and how they engage with crowded environments like bars or shopping malls for example. I know of two very skilled, very wise, very kind psychic readers who are selective about where they go and how long they stay in busy public places. It’s not in any way the product of anxiety or agoraphobia. It’s pure self care. It takes time, experience and a great deal of self awareness for these high vibration folks to learn where their boundaries are and how to manage them.

For those of us who are generally energy sensitive, but not emotionally empathic, it is quite a bit easier to see that boundary between our own emotions and general environmental energies. I like to think of it as zeitgeist sensitivity or energy resonance separate from any empathic process.

Zeitgeist means the general mood of a time or a cultural phenomenon. In my experience, this is the energy we tap into when we post a general reading for a blog or on social media without a specific individual in mind. The cultural mood of the time, the zeitgeist, is the general-public parallel with the higher self, spirit guides or divine that we sense in an individual Tarot session.

In times of great emergency like the current pandemic, the cultural energy is so strong, so ubiquitous, and so pervasive that the lines become blurred even for those of us who are not usually empathic. It is helpful to think of this like resonance from physics. Think of the tuned bells in a hand bell choir. If you strike a tuning fork and hold it very close, a bell tuned to that some note could in theory vibrate along with it. If our intuition is sensitive to cultural zeitgeists then we can resonate with that environmental energy. The general zeitgeist, through resonance, rings our bell too.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a giant bell-ringer for everyone. I worry for our very empathic friends. There is very real danger, illness, grief, and hardship out there. I can’t imagine any sane person who is NOT experiencing SOME level of adjustment. Imagine feeling the real things we are all facing, plus the emotions of others on top of it all. For those of us lucky enough to be safe and well at the moment, it still might be a good idea to get our mental fire suit out.

In order to do our best readings for our clients, and to maintain our own psychic / spiritual health, I think it is important for all sensitives, intuitives, Tarot readers and the like to take care of their emotional boundaries in a time like this. It is important to know what is your own, inner, real, valid, valuable, genuine emotions and what is the outside world ringing your bell.

Intention, as always, is everything. Finding your emotional boundaries and putting on your fire suit can be as simple as visualizing. Imagine yourself surrounded by white or golden light. When I was in my teens, before I was at a place in life where I could quit, I would sit in the more toxic Sunday services at my parent’s church and visualize myself wearing an orange hazmat suit. It helped. Now I have a whole variety of energy protecting, boundary fortifying, zeitgeist clarifying tools: black tourmaline, discreet pentacles and sigils, aura clearing aromatherapy spray, visualizations and more. Yes, it is all full-throttle woo woo but it has value. It helps me understand my emotions with greater clarity, it helps me understand the outer situation, and helps me keep logic and reason close at hand. That makes it worth it, no matter how woo-woo it might seem to some folks. It may take some trial and error, but you can find your fire suit too. I encourage you to find the things that help you see what is your emotion (so you can honor it) and what is the outside world pinging your boundary lines (so you can put that information to good use.) If you aren’t sure, try a little visualization and active imagination. Imagine yourself wearing a protective fire suit that keeps out any vibe not coming from your own true heart. The suit doesn’t cut you off from the world. You still feel the heat of it all. The suit lets you know that you aren’t the one on fire.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Change Will Change

Pause the video if you need a moment to choose your card for today, then restart the video to see the reveal. You know what I wrote on the blog about Pentacle cards repeating? Scratch that…nothing has changed about the pandemic. It’s an eneregy shift today, NOT a physical realm one. More on that in another post. Meanwhile, we have to stay in Samuel L. Jackson mode…. STILL wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and stay the f*ck at home. New York City is still in the thick of it, so the worst is yet to come for the rest of us. Be safe, and take good care of yourselves as best as you can.

Left: 3 of Cups. Even the introverts are starting to catch a little cabin fever…until we listen to the news or scroll social media. Forget mass media. Take a loooong break from your socials. The human spirit is thirsting for real, genuine one to one conversation. We can’t feed our need for physical interaction so it is all the more important to feed our need for genuine conversation and a meeting of the minds. Use technology for genuine conversation and connection, not mass broadcast. Leave that for the professional journalists. Write a letter. Make a phone call. Text. Zoom if that’s your thing. It is a two for one offer. The conversation just might lift the whole group’s spirits.

Middle: The Moon. The physical moon moves through cycles in its appearance to us on earth, so this card is often associated with the natural cycles of things. That daisy-chains to effect of the moon on the tides, connecting the card to water and intuition. The energies today are right to experiment with your own intuition. Listen with your heart, extend your feelings. What shifts in mood and energy do you sense? What is in your energy environment right now that needs your attention? Is it within you, hinting at a need for self-care or is it outside of you calling you to help others?

Right: The Wheel. Freud was right. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. Sometimes the message from a card is just as obvious, simple and straight forward as it seems. This will all change. Life changed from normal to pandemic mode and will change again in time. It will never go back to what once was because this will always have happened…this time and this experience will always exist. Time will move on, things will change. It will become our choice whether we let this time scar us, strengthen us, empower us or haunt us. Change is inevitable, but the choice is yours about how…and if…you embrace it.

Today’s Tarot: It’s Still Here.

King of Pentacles. Again

(Insert Witcher style “f*ck” here)

When a card keeps dogging us like this, the first to come to mind is to question what is it trying to tell us that we just aren’t getting? What in the world are we missing that the card has to keep coming back? We talked about practical preparation and the pandemic. We’ve talked about leadership by example. Follow your own instincts. If you think something is missing, by all means follow that hunch and look for the message that is missing. You are welcome to re-read the posts, google other sources and the old Modern Oracle archives are at your disposal.

My hunch is to go meta.

The youtube, blog, general-audience, draw a card with the intention of helping someone somewhere or whoever needs it type social media readings have been heavy on the coins (pentacles…same thing) lately. So have the private distance readings. Down to earth practicality messages everywhere.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the top of mind, physical realm concern 10 feet thick from sea to shining sea. As it should be. We got stuff to do – and not do. This is a physical realm oriented energy tidal wave. There are very real crisis and very real anxieties everywhere. There a very real problems to be managed with the most level head we can muster. Even the most fortunate of us have had to make adjustments for the health and greater good of everyone. If you haven’t made changes, if you put your own lifestyle over the life and health of fellow humans – then you have a world of problems that I can’t help you with.

But enough with the public service announcements (stay home, don’t touch your face and wash yo dang hands) what IS this constant repetition of coins cards, especially the King of Pentacles trying to tell us?

The repetition IS the message. The card is still here. So is the pandemic. The danger has NOT passed. The message of the repetition is to keep it up. Don’t let off the gas, keep on keeping on as best as you can no matter what your role in this is. (If your role is first responder, medical professional, grocery or food retail….thank you. For the love of all that is good and right, take care of yourself and tell us how we can help)

Today, when I saw the King of Pentacles again, I was resistant to the repeating card. It still feels like I’ve said all that possibly could be said about it and all the other coins cards lately. Now I hope the coins cards keep coming. I want the repetitions to be the canary in the coal mine. I want the cards to keep the coins coming until the issue has passed. I am grateful for Tarot cards that get in your face and stay in your face until the energy they warn against really has diminished.

If wishes were fishes….

Of course this is magical thinking when it comes to real dangers like the COVID-19 pandemic. Cards can’t be trusted for something as real world as this. This situation calls for logic and science and reason and rationality and practicality….as is often the advice from this suit of cards. Most of the time, that’s the advice from the Pentacles come to think of it. It would be nice if the cards would give us the ‘all clear’ by having the King and other coin cards suddenly disappear from daily readings, but it doesn’t work that way.

I’m reading the continued presence of the King and other Pentacle cards as clear advice to listen to science and trustworthy medical sources. You can’t drive nails with a cell phone. You can’t make phone calls on a hammer. You can’t take medical advice from a deck of cards. You can, however, be reminded to persist in our practicality and actions in a protracted real-world situation.

Here we are. Another day in quarantine, another day with the King of Coins. What does it mean? It means ignore the BS. It means keep up with the CDC &WHO recommendations. It means stay the f*ck at home and wash your hands. “We stay at home for them because they stay at work for us.” as Misha Collins said.

It isn’t over. The card…and more importantly…the pandemic is still here.

For what it is worth…I get the mental image of an emergency light. You know, the old school red bubble rotating light. Take this whole things seriously, but not with panic.

I was once told by a paramedic instructor that “if you prepare for an emergency, the emergency goes away” meaning that the emergency still happens, but it no longer exists as a high stress panic stricken emergency situation in you mind. The emergency goes away because it becomes something you just do because you already know what TO do.

Or, in this case, like another friend of mine once said, “Stay strong. Get Lazy”

*Raises virtual mug of coffee to Judy and Brett* **

**after I washed my hands

Today’s Tarot: Queen of Wands

Queen cards represent leadership as much as the King cards do, very much a team, not unlike a maternal / paternal partnership. The Queen’s leadership takes a more nurturing form. While the king is protector, Queen is a manager. While the King is out whacking away at the enemy, the Queen is in the castle keep making sure there are enough food stores, and supplies. That is exactly the kind of leadership we need in the times of a pandemic. You can’t whack a virus. It isn’t about male or female, but about leadership style that either gender can use and exhibit. We are all being asked to use skills that we haven’t had to use in a long time, if ever.

I’ve worked from home for a while now. And I use the term work loosely…and yes, that is a shameless plug to please give me more Tarot and Reiki work to do…but it takes a different skill set than it did way back in the day when the alarm went off and days unfolded on a pre-determined schedule. Don’t get me wrong, I love the free flowing coffee and being able to tool around in my fuzzy bunny slippers, but you do have to have some discipline and put some real time, thought and effort into managing time. And resources. And going for groceries. People in the gig economy who work out of their home have been ready for this. Now everyone has to latch on to those kinds of skills, and they are there. You got this.

Make and keep a schedule. Plan meals in advance and shop strategically (pro tip: use grocery store sales flyers to get meal ideas)…all simple but effective. You got this.

Leadership comes in a lot of forms. A little TLC and queenly management is one of them. Everyone can use a little comfort these days. That includes the queenly management. That includes you.

Stay safe out there.

And wash your hands.