Tag: persist

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Don’t Give Up Now

https://youtu.be/3dnwbLJ4ZX

I learned a long time ago that the fastest way to torpedo a plan is to 1. make one and 2. publish it on the blog.

Which is precisely why I like the quote that Adam Savage had on Tested.com…”Follow the process, not the plan.” Very Taoist, that. Follow the natural flow of things, which changes, often randomly. It looks like these YouChoose posts are going to be either Saturday afternoon or Monday morning. Hopefully. In one time zone or another. Maybe. I find myself unable to get pedantic or fussed up about it. In my opinion/experience being to rigid, or finicky about these things is antithetical to good Tarot. Tarot and intuition is about reading the dynamic flows of the energy. Imposing your will, your schedule, your expectations on the Tarot experience is seldom helpful. At the same time, it helps to have some internal structure, some common ground or else we can get disoriented and drown in the flow. It is a little like a soft stuffie with a poseable wire skeleton. Adaptable underpinning is what I think I’m trying to say. And the adaptable underpinning for these videos will be to look for them on Monday mornings. Except when they post early, on Saturday – but they will still be here waiting for you come Monday. You get the idea, so let’s get on with this.

If I were to put all three cards together in a sentence, it would be evaluate and persist. Or, look how close you are – don’t give up now.

Left: King of Swords. The air and intellectual aspects of swords step forward, along with the decisiveness of a king. “Be the decider” comes through along with “Evaluate.” Let your head lead this week. Fly by instrument. Feelings can bubble and surge, but use logic and reason to navigate it all. Evaluate where you are – you might be farther along in the process of things than you thought.

Center: Five of Pentacles (coins) Times have been tough, many have been generous. Don’t stop giving, helping, cooperating just yet. Keep doing what you have been doing to survive. “Some winters are long” Don’t give up now. Persistence is our way out of the cold.

Right: Nine of Cups. Nine is the largest single digit card. Things are close to wrapping up. The nine of cups has to do with family celebrations. “Don’t be tied to time.” again with a feeling of head rules heart this week. “Do what needs done to prepare” because things delayed before may be coming back to play in days ahead if we are disciplined and prepare just a little more.

I can almost hear some of you out there asking “when?” Tarot does not predict the future…it tells you how to create it. Our three dimensional universe runs on an engine of cause and effect. If you give up or change course you get one set of results. If you keep doing what logic, intellect and reason dictate then you get another, different (in this case better) result. And yes, as a matter of fact I am referring to keep wearing a mask until a real expert and not an idiot right wing politician says to change. The virus is a prime example of why persistence is valuable. If we stop masking and distancing too soon, then the mutant strains keep mutating and we lose the ground we’ve gained with vaccines and people die necessarily. Public health has two parts to it. One part is the community at large: what you do affects how many people get sick and die in total. The other part is your personal health: what you do affects your chances of getting sick or dying. Wearing a mask and staying home away from indoor groups helps BOTH parts.

Thus ends my public service announcement for today, the same as it was roughly a year ago…wear a mask, stay the heck at home and wash your hands.

Don’t stop. A year is an arbitrary thing that human beings made up. The virus don’t give a damn about calendars, so you have to give a damn about yourself and the health of others. Don’t give up now.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Own It.

Pause the video if you need more time to pick your card, then restart to see the reveal. Scroll down to see your card reading. Please follow the blog so you don’t miss any of the learn-to-read-Tarot and other “my side of the table” written content that will be coming up over the next few months.

Left: Knight of Pentacles. “SUSTAIN” A knight that drops his shield in a battle doesn’t survive for very long. In this case “back to business” does NOT mean back to the way things were before. It means put on your big kid underwear and keep going, even if you are exhausted to the bone. Last month was alarms and claxons and responding to a real life and death emergency, collectively speaking. This isn’t recovery. This is keep going. Keep your guard up. This card is letting us know this isn’t close to over. We needed a period of mobilization, freak-out, and adjustment, without judgement. Now is the time to be adjusted already and sustain our response. Forget before. It’s time go get to the business of the business at hand. Energies are shifting from an all out sprint to a sustained, marathon endurance pace.

Center: Nine of Wands. Read the Knight of Pentacles, this is basically the same message on a slightly less literal and more mental/emotional level. Energies are shifting, but stay on guard. If you are empathic or otherwise energy sensitive, continue to set strong boundaries. Don’t be a victim. Be responsible. Do the self-care you need to sustain through this middle phase. There is no “back to normal.” Do what you need to do to be in a good head space right here, right now.

Right: The Star. “Thank the things that got you this far” This is also has a bit of a mental/emotional/spiritual spin to it, although it is important to know the physical realm people and resources that have helped you…and the things that can and will help you still. Pay it forward as best as you can both now and later. Less literally, think about the things that got you through the initial response and change and is helping you to sustain as we begin the middle of unknowable duration. What ideas, beliefs, people and practices have gotten you this far? What old beliefs that “should” be your rock and your shelter have crubled to dust under the weight of everything? What beliefs have supported and sustained you? What new shining star guides you when the world seems to spin out from under you? Forget before. What ideas and beliefs have proven their worth under these very real stresses be they old or new?

Buckaroo Bonzai said “No matter where you go, there you are.” Well, here we are. It isn’t like it was, but it is what we have. Now it is time to own what we do with it.

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