TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Many long years in the before time, a wise man spoke.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
A lifetime and a half ago, I used to work in health care. How we got from there to Tarot blog & podcast is another story for another day. When I was a student, I was very lucky to do my ER rotation with a Canadian doctor who used to work in a very rural, northern part of the country. He was a private pilot and literally flew from one remote clinic to another to provide basic, general practice health care. Here in the land of bankruptcy prices, brainless shotgun labs and cookbook internal medicine, his expertise is arguably a lost art. He gifted me with a pearl of wisdom that applies to damn near everything and has proven true time and again for the past 35 or so years.
Listen.
He said “Diagnosis is easy. Listen to your patients and they will tell you what is wrong with them.”
By that same token, supporting your own well being is easy. Listen to what you body is telling you. Listen to what your emotions and intuition are telling you. Let logic tell you if things are getting too far off track.
Listen to yourself. Listen to what you and your true nature need and do that. Or at least try to accommodate your night owl or morning person self as much as your schedule allows.
Today’s card is the Night Owl card from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck, illustrated by WolfSkullJack. Seven Dane Asmund interprets the card as “that thing you know but won’t or can’t admit to yourself.” It feels akin to the energy that Ted Andrews writes about for another nocturnal creature, wolves, for his version of the Moon card. He writes that “When wolf shows up it is time to trust our inner guidance…”
So how do you do that? How do you trust your inner guidance? How do you come to terms with unacknowlable inner truth?
Listen.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Asmund’s night owl and Andrew’s moon wolf are nocturnal beings.
When the day is gone and the night arises, when all of the distractions go dark, you can’t escape yourself. All that is left is to listen.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
A new plan is in motion and you can play a part.
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the three of wands from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.
This card, along with a couple of others, suits August energy particularly well -at least here in the northern hemisphere. The seven of pentacles reminds us to be hands-off and let nature do its thing. The eight of wands is hints at hands that are tied. Things are in progress but out of your control and there is nothing you can do until the penny drops and the arrows land.
The three of wands has an outward appearance of waiting, like the other cards, but with a greater degree of mental alertness and engagement. This card signifies a time of expansion and growth, but with inner attention as much as outward motion. In that sense, it is a little bit like a Chariot light card. It’s akin to the major arcana’s chariot card but less intense. It’s watching your homemade caramel sauce like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. It isn’t slam into the side of a mountain level stuff like the test-pilot chariot card, but it is about being alert and watchful. It’s like chef Anne Burrel says. You can go “from master to disaster” in a few seconds if you aren’t careful.
The three of wands lets us know that stuff is happening. It is a wide horizon, expansive energy. There is plenty of room here to flex your intellectual muscle and emotional maturity. This is a big open mental space where you can fuse logic and intuition into foresight.
Personally, I identify with the “stuff is happening” part of this. I’m streamlining my email readings so people can send their questions and order the reading in one seamless process when you use the commissions menu on the ko-fi page. I hope to have more ebooks coming online as the Fall and Winter progress. I’m working on some options that will hopefully allow me to inflation proof my private reading prices, although I still need your support for this blog and podcast through the shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees on the ko-fi page.
Please stay tuned for all of those announcements. BUT for today I have something else in mind. Today is August 1, mid season between summer solstice and the fall equinox, and that seems like an auspicious time, and the three of wands seems like an auspicious card to introduce card cuts into all of my readings.
Cutting the cards is a Tarot tradition. Sometimes it is just a part of shuffling the deck. I like the tradition of cutting the cards and letting the client choose which portion of the deck we use to draw the cards. I’ve done this forever for in-person readings. It really does bring your intuition and your energy into the reading in a more powerful way. Even though the connection isn’t affected by time or distance, when we are working individually at a distance through email readings or collectively at a distance through the blog and podcast, it still helps to forge some sort of connection. Of course the most potent connection is your decision to read the blog, listen to the podcast, or purchase a private reading. Making a connection with an individual reading is easy. In person or online we talk about your question or whatever it is that prompted you to get the reading in the first place. Individual email readings are just as easy. Whenever I see your name and question (or permission for an open reading) in print, that’s when the connection clicks into place.
I’ve been experimenting with making the connection to blog and podcast and you tube readings more personal. You might have seen those in the “You Choose Interactive” posts. It clicked, but not as well as I’d hoped even with embellishments like crystal or shapes or something else to help the choice besides “left, center, or right.”
If individual choice is awkward, let’s try a collaborative choice. You choose. We’ll try left, center anr right again but as a group.
Want to play along? Just put a comment somewhere with your choice of left, center or right. Drop it here on the blog, over on the you tube channel, or on any of the socials (I’ll put links in the podcast episode description). In upcoming videos and posts, I’ll cut the deck into three piles. Tell me whether you want me to draw the short sip card from the left, center or right. I’ll watch the comments, and whenever there is a clear majority, that’s the cut I’ll use for the next week or so in the short sip readings. I’ll put the call out for a new cut, and you can comment your choice again. And so it goes. Even if you choice isn’t in the majority, the whole process is energized by your effort and intentions, making it better for everyone. I wonder what Carl Jung and his collective unconscious theory would say about this exercise? Put a little energy in, get a more energized reading back. Fair enough, right?
Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to take your time, browse the blog, and please leave a comment with your choice of deck stack for the next few readings. Heck, comment about anything in the blog / cast. Or go all out and ask a question! I won’t promise it will all make it into the blog, but all questions are welcome. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I’ll see you at the next sip!
It exists. I promise. I’ve experienced it, and it is possible.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the Star from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck with artwork by J Star designs.
Guidance is core to the Star card. Navigating by the stars, finding your north star.
This card and today’s energy takes my mind in a slightly different direction.
My first thought at seeing the card was a supernova. Instead of us reaching out to the eternal sky for guidance, the guidance bursts across time and space to reach us.
Oddly, it reaches out with silence, and peace.
It’s like the old critique of Star Wars. There could be no ka-boom when the death star blows up because there is no atmosphere to propagate the sound waves. We couldn’t hear an entire star explode. Supernova are silent.
I was talking with a friend about another kind of science. We were talking about the confusion and misinformation that raged through the pandemic as hotly as the virus did. Real science and solid facts have never been quite able to keep up with the rumor mill. It’s exponentially worse now that the bubble brained rumor mill runs at the speed of cyberspace. The world is a noisy place when it comes to information.
It seems to me that silence is a hint that you are on the right track.
As we’ve all lived and worked through this thing we’ve all experienced, we’ve all developed our coping strategies. One of mine was to find one or two solid, trustworthy experts and listen to them and tune the rest of the B.S. right on out. There is an element of peace in that.
In her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards talks about a certain mindset, a certain mental place found in the act of drawing (or I would add writing or making knitting or creating almost anything) where the world around you falls silent. That peaceful silence is the place where those activities are most meditative. I tried the exercises in the book. It’s true. I’ve been in that silence of creativity that can also be the doorway for clarity.
Intuitively, I keep getting the phrase “silent lucidity” It took a bit of brain racking and few minutes on google to figure out that it is the title of a Queensryche song from the nineties. Never was a fan, an all I remember of the song is those two words, so I’m chalking this one up to intuition and taking it as a validation of today’s card and message.
When a supernova flashes brighter than all of the other stars, when something cuts through the noise of everyday life and brings you a feeling, if not a literal moment of silent lucidity or peaceful clarity, that….
That is something you pay attention to. That is something that can guide you. That is something worth trusting yourself to find.
Thank you all for reading and listening. TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. It puts your message first, not advertiser’s so your kind support on the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page is very much appreciated.
The blog and podcast will be taking a little coffee break on Thursday, July 28. Email readings are open, still no appointment needed, order anytime. The blog & pod will return Friday. See you at the next sip!
This isn’t an IBM ad. I’m talking about that thing you do with your brain.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
I’m glad I listened to pure impulse and picked up my Steampunk Tarot today. If you search the blog, you can see all the old posts about the Judgement card. I don’t know how much sense any of it makes. Some people have a significator card, a card they feel represents their essence. Or at least most of us have a card or two or a few that we resonate with more than the others. The judgement card, on the other hand, is my nemesis card. It pushes my buttons and pokes at old scars in ways that aren’t always helpful.
I love the steampunk deck’s version of Judgement though. It is the only Judgement card that doesn’t send me into a puddle of spiraling, evangelical induced post-traumatic babble like other versions the judgement and hierophant (aka pope) cards typically do.
The judgement card, like the rest of the major arcana, has at least two major threads of meaning woven into it.
One is the judgement day, face the music kind of judgement, not unlike how we might say a court judgement or a lawsuit judgement. The legal judgement also connects to the second thread…the decision making process itself. The word “reckoning” works here too. An older meaning for reckoning is to settle a debt or account. But it also means calculation or deciding, like “navigation by dead reckoning.” The biggest problem with judgement card is how easily it can slip into petty judgmentalism.
My least favorite representation of the Judgement card is, as you might expect, is the Waite Smith Tarot. Pamela Smith’s art is saturated with christian symbolism with angels, trumpets, dead looking naked people standing in graves. That whole rapture-ish resurrection second coming thing always gives me that nervous eye tick feeling. Past experience shows the slip to judgmentalism is very short with that kind of symbolism around.
Let’s just say if that kind of religion is your jam, go for it. For me it’s a jar jammed full of glowing green radioactive toxicity. In fact, in the back of my mind, I have always low key hoped that my Tarot work would help others who disliked and rejected by the American evangelicals as much as it has helped me to recover from a childhood in that subculture.
But today, thankfully, all of that is beside the point because the card is pointing to the other connotation, the “use your head” and “use good judgement” part of the card.
The Steampunk deck is good for steering intuition away from the Smith artwork. In fact, this artwork has the opposite effect. It could easily have a “face the music” connotation, but in her guidebook for the deck Aly Fell interprets it as “heeding a call.” That is a card meaning I can resonate with. Not so much a judgement in the traditional sense, not so much answering a “calling” in the religious sense, but rather a actively thinking about our life path and thinking about the meaning we infuse into what we do.
The image also calls to mind some of my favorite D.J. and E.D.M. music like Mystery Skulls and Daft Punk. It taps into my cyberpunk side as much as the Steampunk aesthetic for some reason.
It all takes me to a happy place of thinking and reason perfectly blended with abstract ideas and creativity.
It’s a personality thing that works for some people more than others. It also brings to mind Myers-Briggs personality categories. Today’s card is a comfort zone for all the thinkers, all the people with a T as the third of their four letter category. This is one for my fellow geeks.
For feelings people, those with the “F” in their code, it might be more challenging. It might be harder for them to let their head rule their heart for whatever challenges life might pose for them.
Challenge or comfort zone, the call the Judgment card is asking us to heed is a simple one: Think.
Thank you all for reading and listening!
While no appointment needed email Tarot readings by the author are available to order on the blog website, the blog itself and the podcast are not monetized. Your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content.
It’s like the difference between taking a lunch break and quitting your job.
Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the Seven of Pentacles. It picks up on a thread from yesterday’s Ace of Cups. Remember how there was a sense of a seasonal shift in season toward a quieting to balance peak summer. You have to give the seeds time to grow before the harvest can happen.
The same idea applies generally, not just to medieval farmers on Tarot cards. Persistence is important. Perseverance is a key to success.
The other day I was browsing the Psychology Today website (as one does) and stumbled on a review of Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion of Perseverance by Michael Page. Angela Duckworth is a psychologist who studied the psychology of success. She listed the qualities exemplified by successful people in a wide variety of careers and industries. According to the review, grit was defined as perseverance combined with passion and it was more often present then talent or genius. Grit and persistence topped genius and giftedness.
The seven of pentacles is reminding us to protect our grit.
There is a difference between a pause or a short rest and giving up altogether.
The occasional pause to rest and reevaluate is as essential to success as the passion part is essential to the persistence part to create Duckworth’s grit of success.
Blindly, rigidly plowing ahead keeps us from adapting and it can be a recipe for burnout. Even if you manage to persist through the burnout, you lose the passion that is equally a part of the overall success.
This strikes me as the yang side of the four of swords’ rest and contemplation vibe. The four of swords is inwardly contemplative. This card, the seven of pentacles is more outwardly focused, evaluating and assessing and re-evaluating more than meditative. It’s physically quiet but mentally active. This kind of rest is full of evaluation, planning and mentally preparing for the next step (as opposed to more active preparation advice that you might see with the three of wands)
Pentacles represent our relationship to wealth, career, and the physical realm. It is only fitting that a pentacle card would remind us to preserve a key element of long term success.
Take a pause, protect your grit, then get back to persisting.
Thank you so much for reading and listening! Your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments are always appreciated!
The feeling inside your cup is your feels to feel, they don’t belong to the chaos outside.
What’s in your cup this morning?
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
The Alleyman’s Tarot deck was extra rowdy this morning. It was sliding out of my hands and spewing all over the table after just one shuffle.
Today’s card is the Ace of Cups.
I’m sure it is just because of the great finish on the cards and the fact that I’m not exactly little miss coordination this morning, but it seems like chaos is part of the message today.
Cups have to do with the element of water, so you have all of those metaphors. Of all the properties of water, the movement is what comes to mind. It’s the “water can crash” part of Bruce Lee’s famous “be water my friend” interview. Cups also traditionally symbolize emotions. Another way of understanding the suit of cups is our closest relationships. Nothing touches our emotions like love, romance, marriage, family, children – all of our closest relationships.
The ace always touches on the essence of a suit. The ace of cups today is pointing square at our emotions and emotional state.
It is, after all, storm and hurricane season.
A couple of years ago, at the end of 2019 when the pandemic hadn’t fully hit, I did a series of readings. It seems like the energy environment was ringing everybody’s bell – hard. I must have had at least half a dozen different people say that they were having intense emotions or anxieties that they couldn’t explain which drew them to the reading. In some ways it’s hard to believe that is already two and a half years ago, almost three. In other ways it’s hard to believe that it has been ONLY two and half years ago.
Still, time has passed and that particular storm of emotion and energy has passed right along with it.
The same advice still applies, however.
I’m not talking about true mental health issues here. Those deserve respect, and the skills of a professional. Tarot isn’t for that. It can help, certainly, but Tarot is excellent for coping and gaining insight into normal ups and downs that we all experience at one time or another. Tarot helps all of us surf the crashing waves of human existence.
It’s like the extra slippery-slidey Alleyman’s deck today. Sometimes life just gets chaotic energy sometimes. Over on my personal blog “Sage & Stuff” I call it the squirrel rave after that internet meme that says “I don’t have ducks, I don’t have rows. I have squirrels. And they are having a pagan rave.”
When you are in the middle of a squirrel rave or a hurricane or life’s crashing waves or whatever metaphor you like, the ace of cups is reminding us that our emotions are still our own, regardless of the surrounding slippery crashing chaos. You don’t have to take on the energy and emotions around you.
For some people that is easier than for others. We all have our own unique levels of empathy. We all have our unique levels of stress tolerance. We all have our own individual skin thickness when it comes to stress and emotions.
Which reminds me of a pediatrics lecture I heard a very long time ago where the doctor quoted some sort of old adage along the lines of “some kids are carrots, some kids are eggs. If you put one in hot water it goes to mush, but the other just gets hard boiled.”
Whenever a wave of emotion hits, especially if it feels out of character for you or feels disconnected sometimes it pays to do a little bit of an empathy check or an intuitive sensitivity gut-check.
This is one time where we can bring imagination, visualization and the mind-body connection into play for our benefit.
Imagine this:
Think of something that you can imagine to be protective. This is imagination, so it can be anything. Imagine a shield of energy like a comic book superhero. Imagine a wizard’s invisibility cloak. Or a Faraday cage that real-world screens out electromagnetic signals. I like to think of it akin to Violet’s shield power from the Incredibles Disney-Pixar movie. Imagine you are surrounded by whatever force field invisibility cloak fortress-of-solitude symbol that you chose.
Then do an emotions check. With that protective visualization in place, what are your emotions now? Is that thing you’ve been feeling quieter now, as if it was something outside of you that has been pushing your buttons? Or is it inside your super-shield with you?
It is easy to shrug off difficult emotions and blame it on things like being empathic or mercury in retrograde or whatever. It’s natural to want to keep difficult emotions at arms length at least until a situation settles down or we heal enough to actually deal with them.
There is an up side to it. Sometimes the emotions really are out there and once you sort that out you can get back to being the laid back zen low pressure center of the hurricane.
Sometimes emotions are the tempest in a teapot, all yours to deal with. Sometimes emotions are a storm warning vibrating to let you know what the energy environment holds. The still waters inside your cup are still yours to keep no matter what is on the horizon. Both take courage to keep the cup strong. The emotions inside the cup are your feels to feel either way.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate each of you and a special hello and welcome to new subscribers and social media followers. I’m always grateful for any likes, subs, shares, follows, questions or comments that you can spare.
The blog, podcast and youtube channel are not monetized by me: your energy message comes first here, not advertisers’. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique (almost) daily Tarot content.
Members only newsletter and learn to read Tarot “turnover” exercise is up for this week: HERE
I put the planned schedule for Fall on my personal blog, Sage & Stuff. Now we just need to see how long this one holds up before this squirrel rave that we call life blows everything up.
The content on the other blog is going to be different from this one moving forward, so you are all more than welcome to follow both. In fact, I kind of hope you will.
Memberships are available on ko-fi if you would like to access the Tarot Turnover intuition builder exercises. There are two levels of membership available:
Get your seat at the Tarot Table for $5 per month and get:
pathway 3 card Tarot reading every month on the members only ko-fi blog
newsletter – also on the ko-fi blog
weekly bts and Tarot card reading practice with the weekend “Tarot Turnover” posts
Special offers and giveaways – current offer is 60% off Zombie Cat yes/no readings when purchased through the ko-fi shop.
Be a Patron of the Tarot Arts for $10 per month and get
all Tarot Table benefits
PLUS individual, private, one card meditation readings to your email upon request up to 3 per calendar month.
Here is the Big announcement:
TaoCraft Tarot shop is now exclusively on ko-fi.
This will help me keep prices the same for the rest of this year, at least.
My readings are some of the most affordable going, anyway. I charge a flat rate per total reading, not per minute. Compare my roughly hour long 7 card readings at $40 to the $50 to $75 to $90 some other psychics charge for as little as 30 minutes. Granted, I’ll be holding the line on time a little more strictly than I have in the past, but this would be an out and out bargain at half of the time for a reading from someone with 30 years of Tarot reading experience.
There are a few new pages here. I’ll let you browse the new Reiki and How To Find a Trustworthy Psychic (excerpt from the upcoming TaoCraft: Portfolio) pages at your leisure.
Have a great week…see you Monday – Friday for Short Sip Tarot posts & podcasts!
Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Yesterday we had a whole mug full with the rewrite of “Meet Zombie Cat.”
Today we are to sounding like that insurance company commercial that knows a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two. I’ve done a lot of Tarot readings. I stopped counting at 300 plus way back in my online “Baihu” days.
Tarot is best suited to answer”Am I doing the right thing?” but Tarot is most often asked things like “Will we get back together?”
Not, mind you, that it’s a bad question.
There are a billion different circumstances that are bad and worse that could lead to this question, but for now, let’s think of in terms of a non-married shorter term romantic break-up.
These types of break-up questions, while common, are the best and worst of Tarot all at the same time.
The bad part is the “will…” Can Tarot predict what will happen? Nope. Can Tarot read your significant other’s heart or mind or feelings or intentions or know what they will do? Big nope.
On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of situation where Tarot is at its best.
Have you ever noticed that criticisms of Tarot and psychic work are all laser focused on the prediction part and ignore the rest, which is missing the point as completely as you possibly can? Nothing is ever said about the real value of Tarot and Psychic readings: personal development, personal enrichment, spiritual expression, facing and understanding emotional distress, brainstorming creative solutions and spitballing ideas about how to CHOOSE and to ACT to make things better.
Nothing else in the human experience can make you feel like every bone and vital organ has been shattered into a million pieces like the loss of a beloved relationship. If Tarot readings can help soothe that kind of hurt for a moment, it is more than worth it, no matter what the critics say.
But it has to be a sincere reading, an authentic reading without the onus of accurate predictions. So-called accurate predictions are impossible to make anyway and only open the door to greater hurt. As with physicians, we must do no harm.
There is a big difference, however, between doing harm and uncovering anger. Anger is an honest emotion that may, if faced, lead to better things.
If you are the one hearing the “nope” then it is normal, natural, even expected to get angry when you get the answer that you’ve been dreading the most. In the long run a harsh truth is more healing than a sugar coated platitude. I’ve gotten nopes like this before and stomped off angry like the self-involved early twenty-something brat that I was. But looking back it was one of the best readings ever. Honesty heals even when it hurts. More so when it is given kindly and with the sympathetic tone of someone who has been through this kind of experience before – which is pretty much everybody. Calling you on your -ah -stuff – is what people who care about you do. It’s like telling someone when they have food stuck in their teeth. It might zing a little in the moment but it spares them greater embarrassment later on.
WILL you get back together? A better question would be SHOULD you. WHY did the relationship end? Has any of those things changed one iota? Has the past itself changed? Nope. Unless you’ve talked things through, time has passed, and trust has been re-built, it’s still a nope. Even if you wind up back together, unless something has changed, from the “should you” perspective it’s still a big no. Without those changes, what good is it for you to return to the same situation all over again?
Will you get back together? According to a one ace layout, no. Should you get back together? Still not a good idea.
Consider the Queen of Wands symbol of nurturing leadership and inner passions. How are you owning this breakup? What role did you play? What have you learned. Are you willing to lead the relationship part of your life in a new direction? Or not? What feeds and protects your inner flame: trying to rekindle a failed relationship or being on your own with a passion for the life you have (as opposed to obsessing over the life you don’t have.)
Consider the Ace of Cups. This is about emotions. Are the emotions that ended the relationship healthy or unhealthy? Are the emotions driving your desire to get back together healthy? Or, on the other hand, are emotions that make you want to never ever ever get back together the healthy ones?
Consider the Temperance card. Are you in a balanced state of mind when you ask this question? Are all parts of life in balance or is the break-up taking all of your mental and emotional resources? Are you obsessed with romance and ignoring all the other good things in life? What do you need to release to re-balance the scales? What is missing OTHER than the relationship that may be throwing things out of balance?
Zombie Cat tells it like it is. Will you get back with your ex? Nope. BUT there is a lot of good advice under that big, fat NO. Balance this loss with other happiness and other relationships, and other parts of life. Be the leader of your own inner life. Take ownership of your own emotions and our own role in the thing that happened. Be honest about your emotions.
Then the the big, fat nope might not sting quite so much.
Thank you all for reading and listening.
I appreciate you and any likes, subs, follows, shares, question or comments that you can spare.
The blog and podcast are not monetized so your spirit message comes first, not the advertisers’. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content
Thanks again! See you at the next sip!
Get your own private Zombie Cat reading HERE (only available by email) – no appointment needed.
Zombie Cat is shambling through again this summer with yes or no Tarot answers for you.
Zombie Cats don’t move quickly.
This one shuffles through each summer since he popped up out the confluence of ideas that was a Schrodinger’s Cat YouTube explainer and a 2015 Menage A Tarot podcast episode. I’ll put up the original “Meet Zombie Cat” blog post on Thursday if you are interested.
I’m incapable of mentioning Menage A Tarot podcast without saying how grateful I am to David S. Dear, voice actor extraordinaire, for bringing me in on the project back in the 2015 Modern Oracle days. I love his current podcast project, Ninth World Journal on Spotify and Kate continues to rock out loud over at Daily-Tarot-Girl dot com. I’ll put links below & in the episode description so you can check out their awesomeness for yourself.
But yeah – Zombie Cat
I’ve spent a LOT of time talking about movie-style predictions and predicting the future with Tarot and how it doesn’t really work and how its not all that useful anyway. Some people just aren’t in a good head space for that. High minded spiritual growth and personal development really is important, and all of that has its place, but sometimes you just want some short, sweet, kick-in-the-pants guidance.
Even though promises of “100% accuracy” a sure sign of a scam in my opinion, sometimes a little “wtf just do a prediction” can get to your intuition in ways thoughtful, careful “listening to your inner wisdom and higher self” can’t. Especially if you go into it knowing any little thing could change the prediction in a heartbeat. Cause and effect really is a thing, you know.
If you come over to the blog post, you’ll see a video of the last few seconds of a yes or no layout. I didn’t have a particular question in mind when I filmed the cards. I really just intended to demonstrate a little of what the yes or no layout process is (I’ll talk about that part tomorrow)
But me being me and me being Zombie Cat (over the years he’s become a fictional character zero flocks to give outlet for the Tony Stark wannabe side part of my personality) we can’t leave it at just a yes or a no. Oh no. No no.
It starts with an age-old yes/no card dealing pattern of who knows what origin.
Then I change the interpretation of the final three cards to align with the yin yang way three coins are interpreted in the Taoist related classic I Ching…which itself has been used for fortune telling for (no-joke) … millenia. The I ching is believed to have been written around 400 to 800 something ish BC in China. But that is also a topic for another day.
Just for fun, think of a question. Make it one that CAN be answered with a yes or with a no. If you are reading the blog, scroll back up to the video to get your test-case answer (If you want a real reading of your individual question, zombie cat readings are available by email, no appointment needed HERE on the blog website and in the ko-fi shop)
In all of these Zombie Cat readings, after we get the flat yes/no answer, I go through card by card with a few intuitive ideas to consider in addition to the yes no. If you don’t like the yes or no that you got, the cards might hint at ways you can nudge things in a different direction. If you like your answer, the cards might give you hints about how you can strengthen the path you are on.
In the video example we see the final cards are the four of swords, the queen of swords and the ace of pentacles. When you get just one ace, I read that as a flat no.
Four of swords asks you to think about where you need to rest and think. Is being overextended, exhausted, or inattentive part of the reason your answer is no? If you wanted a yes maybe a little rest and contemplation, a mental review of the details will show you a different path than the one you are on. If you like the no, is risking fatigue and inattention worth it to keep it that way?
The queen of swords asks you to think about where you are giving away your power. What are you ceeding to other people that makes this a no? If you like the no, what control are you willing to give to keep things going this way?
The Ace of Pentacles points to cost. What does the no cost you? What practical things can you change or do in order to change or keep your “no”?
This is all very vague and general because this is just a vague and general-audience example reading. It is pretty much the Tarot equivalent of wet spaghetti we’re throwing at the blog and pod walls to see what sticks in the hope that it is helpful to somebody somewhere.
Please come back tomorrow for another yes/no example and Thursday for the Zombie Cat post that started this whole thing.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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