Tag: pittsburgh tarot reader

Silence

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: add power to your words with the power of silence.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here

Today’s card is the two of disks from the Alleyman’s Tarot originally from the Serravale-Sesia Tarot.

This is a presumably public domain card from 1880s Italy. It is an interesting contrast to the better known Waite Smith Tarot and shows the difference in working with a deck that has only pips and a deck with complex narrative images on the numbered minor arcana cards.

Image cards and pip cards function the same way within a reading. Both are two paths to the exact same destination. They both take us to the message for everyone’s day, for our client or for ourselves. The emphasis shifts a little bit between the two types of cards, however.

With images, as we see in the RWS cards, there is a rich supply of detail to prompt your intuition. Despite the many prompts, all of them are thematically tied to the overall image and card meaning. Picture cards can lend themselves to a little more specificity, clarity and context.

On the other hand, pip cards give your intuition free reign. Pip cards are not bound by details or images, although they retain the same general conceptual meaning as an image card. This two of disks talks about balance much the same as the RWS two of pentacles .

Coins, pentacles or disks all refer to the same suit of the deck and you will see the terms used interchangeably. I tend to say coins because that was the name used in one of my first decks and it’s an old habit by this point. Coins are associated with the element of earth and ideas about work, career and money. From a more contemporary perspective it helps to think of coins as our relationship with the physical world. The suit has a very practical down-to-earth vibe generally speaking, so it all fits.

More than the number two cards of the other suits, the two of coins symbolizes balance. Usually it’s a very dynamic balance, like a unicycle rider who constantly makes small corrections and movements in order to balance upright. The taijitu, the yin yang symbol, is another example. The black and white parts of the circle are comma shaped instead of q straight line half to show motion and a dynamic interplay of opposites.

Today, the balance is more akin to the unicycle example. The message has a subtle, nuanced quality to it. It isn’t black and white. It is dynamic and speaks to the way we move through life.

In a way, it is just how human brains are wired and how our brains deal with the onslaught of sensory input from our environment. You get used to things, and they don’t get the attention commanded when something is new or changes. It’s like a busy caretaker tuning out a chattering preschooler a little bit. The message for all of us adults is the same. If you want to be heard, if you want your words to carry power and command attention, use them sparingly. As Mahatma Ghandi said “speak only when it improves upon the silence.”

Outside of a Medieval monastery, it is hard to go through life not saying anything. Communication is essential. In our wired, cyberspace connected world, we often forget the necessity of silence. When TMI takes we are immersed in too much information the tune-out-the-toddler reflex kicks in. We become numb to the input.

It’s a balance between communication, self expression, and losing your words to the noise. Nothing makes your words more powerful than the silent spaces in between.

Thank you so much for reading and listening.

The blog and podcast are not monetized and rely on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi and consider becoming a Patron of the Tarot Arts. The proceeds from ko-fi and private readings through the blog website all contribute to the creation of this free to access Tarot content.

See you at the next sip!

May the 4th be with you – because the force already is

no need to wish that the force be with you – because it already is.

Reiki has crossed my path lately.

That’s not entirely accurate. Reiki IS my path. Or at least a good chunk of it. Or one thread of the braid of it. It’s hard to describe. So let’s back up a few years.

I’ve been told that it is good to re-introduce yourself every now and then. Let me reintroduce you to the Reiki side of Tao Craft.

You know the Tarot part well, even if you have been following along just a short time. Ebooks and mala style meditation beads part of things are pretty self-explanatory for sale ko-fi shop and Etsy shop respectively.

It may seem a little odd to have Tarot and Reiki living in the same cyber space. Reiki and Tarot are actually connected at a fundamental level. The Venn diagrams of Reiki, Tarot and magick overlap so much as to practically be a circle.

It might not make sense at first glance. I mean, sure, Tarot is so associated with all the various forms of magick and witches that it is pretty much assumed that if you read Tarot you are a witch and vice versa. But Reiki? What does Buddhism influenced love, light, and lotus flowers have to do with Tarot and magick craft?

As the name TaoCraft implies, it has a lot to do with it. Whether you use eastern or western terminology, Taoism and Tarot, Magick and Reiki all spring from the same basic substrate of universal energies.

As a quick explanation in terminology, Reiki specifically means a method of energy wellness developed in the 1920s by Micheo Usui of Japan. Other methods of energy healing have come to be called Reiki just like the brand name band-aid has come to be used interchangeably with any adhesive bandage. Some newer energy systems identify as being derived from Usui’s work and so identify as a type of Reiki like (if memory serves) Karuna Reiki and the like. Other energy styles and systems may have started with Reiki but split off to differentiate themselves entirely from the traditional Usui system and take on wholly different names. That can happen on an individual or organizational level and doesn’t imply that the system is any better or worse than Reiki, just that it is a different thing all together. In addition to that you have other energy systems that have always been separate and distinct from Reiki since their inception. As I understand it, Johrei is a similar but religious Japanese discipline that grew in parallel to Reiki during the 20th century.

To be clear, whenever I say Reiki (pronounced “ray key”) I specifically mean the Usui system. I use “energy healing” or “energy wellness” as an umbrella term for all similar healing and wellness practices.

My training and certification is in the Traditional Usui style. I studied first and second level training with Karon Mellon of Sewickley PA in the mid 1990s then repeated these levels and progressed to the master-practitioner level under Master Thom Beardshall of McMurray Pennsylvania in 2000.

I don’t feel particularly drawn to teaching Reiki outside of writing about it. I’m a practitioner and, like Tarot, my strong suit is distance work. For the past four years since the TaoCraft Tarot rebranding, I’ve been focusing on distance Reiki and developing what I call “Sending Stones” distance Reiki sessions. I do call it Reiki because it is a Usui method distance session in accordance with my training BUT with the added embellishment of holding a selected stone or crystal to enhance the ambiance and enjoyment of the session. This is no different than the way many Usui practitioners embellish in-person sessions with music, incense, candles or aromatherapy.

There is so much more to say about Reiki. Far more than any one blog post can cover. So I’ll give you a little homework instead.

To see what the Reiki part of TaoCraft looks like, just click the Reiki tab at the top of the page on the blog, or in the menu if you are viewing the website on a mobile device. There are lots of updates planned, so I hope you’ll follow the blog or podcast to hear about those as they happen.

Based on all I’ve learned over the years plus my personal experience learning Reiki, I am firmly in the camp that says the only way to learn in person and over time. Humans don’t flip switches. It’s not like installing the latest update to you phone’s operating system. Human physiology and psychology takes a little time to fully integrate to a new outlook. It takes time to fully incorporate and keep new energies and new thought habits and new habit-habits. Our eyes are not our only sense. You need to have the tactile experience of feeling energy and the change in your hands. The attunement … I’ll call it a ritual for lack of a better word…is a powerful initiation that must be experienced first hand.

Common wisdom teaches us that low, slow burning fires last the longest. That isn’t to say that doing all three levels of Reiki training in one weekend will cause them to flame out and go away. There is, however, a difference in quality. To put it in culinary terms, it’s like the difference between a cheap fast food hamburger and a slow smoked brisket. It’s like the difference between warming up a can of beans and pot of authentic New Orleans red beans that have been bubbling away in a slow cooker all day. Once attuned always attuned seems true. Achieving an enduring high quality experience of Reiki in your life (whether you treat others or not) needs a sweet spot of time between level attunements. The goldilocks zone of time between attunements seems to be 7 to 21 day. It’s enough to adapt and embrace and use and live your new energy level from the last attunement, but no so much time that your attention fades and you start to lose readiness for the next attunement.

But that’s just me. Like Tarot readers and Magick practitioners, there are as many schools of thought about it as there are people living it.

That being said, I don’t encourage anyone to learn Reiki in a single weekend or solely from books or videos. The makers of the world will understand this part: Sometimes you just have to get your hands on it and DO something to really, really understand. That is even more true for something like Reiki that you don’t just know, that you don’t just DO, but can become a way of life.

Doing and living implies continuation, movement and change. Just like science and mainstream medicine, there is always something to explore, improve and learn in Reiki too. That’s where books come in.

Back in the day, when I was studying for my Doctor Doofenschmirtz style remote learning Ph.D. with Clayton College of Natural Health, Reiki: Universal Life Energy by Bodo Baginski was the first book they assigned for the energy medicine class. It is a classic and a good read if for no other reason than Bodo Baginski is probably one of the coolest, most Hobbit like author’s names I’ve ever seen.

After that, I suggest anything and everything by Walter Lubeck and Frank Arjava Petter, especially as one moves from second level to master or master-practitioner levels. Once you have a basic understanding and basic attunements these books increase your level of proficiency. Reiki Fire and Petter’s books are particularly important for those who come into Reiki under the Takada lineage and who are very invested in the Christianized version of Reiki History. While this version was utterly necessary in its time, and may well be the only thing that preserved Reiki in a time of great bigotry and the internment of Japanese American citizens, it is equally important for we 21st century practitioners to know and understand Reiki’s actual, documented, Buddhist roots.

Christopher Penczak’s Magick of Reiki from 2004 is number one on my personal list of must-read Reiki books, but only if you have an established foundation in Reiki, magick, or both. While it is an engaging, absorbing, clear, easy to understand read, the real heart of the subject matter is a bit esoteric. I didn’t discover the book until fairly recently, so I’ve only engaged with it from an experienced practitioner’s point of view. Even after all these years, I gained much from it, especially on the magick side of the equation where my experience and learning is less.

His explanation of physical versus spiritual Reiki is a crucial utterly essential understanding for any Reiki practitioner, especially here in America. I urge anyone interested in Reiki to read this book if for nothing else but the page explaining this important concept.

Count me on the spiritual side. My dissertation argues that Reiki does indeed have physical benefit BUT through the mechanism of the mind-body connection and through mitigation of the detrimental effects of psychological stress. When Reiki improves stress it improves all the physical things that the stress was making worse. Reiki does have physical benefit, but not in the mainstream allopathic mind set of ‘do this to fix that’. Reiki works in the holistic model of improving total functioning and wellness, not just ameliorating a single symptom or isolated disease process. Reiki shifts the mind part of mind-body wellness from a detrimental stress mode into either a neutral or supportive role, in essence getting stress out of the way so that the body’s natural healing abilities can function at their best. If you are interested in the statistics and references, Reiki and Relaxation is the ebook friendly pdf version of my dissertation.

Having a clear idea of the kind of Reiki you want to practice improves your practice.

Again, I work from a spiritual/emotional healing point of view with my Reiki practice. In the beginning, because of my medical background, I tried to work from the physical model and bring Reiki into the mainstream.

It doesn’t work. You wind up whittling away so much of Reiki in order to fit that square peg into an unyielding juggernaut of a round hole that after a while it does a disservice to both the client and to the practice of Reiki writ large…

to be continued

Seed

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee

Hello and welcome to Tao Craft Tarot blog and podcast

Today’s card is unique to the Alleyman’s Tarot and was created by Seven Dane Asmund for the deck.

I connect the card to the High Priest as it is portrayed by Dugan & Evans in the Witches Tarot. It also brings to mind lovely artist and Tarot reader Johanne Denelli. She first helped me see the Pope / Hierophant / High Priest card as anything other than a pure nemesis (because of its strong religious portrayal in early decks like the Marseille and Waite Smith decks.)

I think the non-dogmatic, keeper of culture, kindly teacher, teller of stories around the campfire aspect is what the artist intended for the Tradition card.

Today, however, the card also brings to mind the silent meditation protests of Buddhist monks in Myanmar and other countries over the years.

Traditional does not equate with blind adherence and eternal sameness.

Human beings who grow, learn, evolve, and change is in itself a tradition of sorts.

A tradition of compassion and justice can spark revolution when hate and injustice flourishes. In that context, tradition is to be honored and can be the seed of revolution.

But what if your given history and tradition is the one causing the injustice? How do you honor your traditions and ancestors when your ancestors were a herd of jackasses?

In that way too, tradition carries the seed of revolution when it becomes the spark for opposition and becomes a call to action as something to be ended or at least profoundly changed.

Today the Tradition card is asking us to use our traditions to take us to a place of compassion. It can become a connection with our fellow humans and our core humanity either by honoring our traditions or abandoning them, whichever path is the right one for the individual.

Thank you for reading and listening. I always appreciate your support through likes, follows, shares, questions and comments.

If you enjoy the blog or podcast, please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fil to support their creation and production. Private email readings ordered through the blog website also helps to produce this Tarot content for everyone.

Thank you again. See you at the next sip!

Sunday evening cuppa tea

It’s hard to believe, but I’m not all coffee all of the time. In the evening when the day is winding down, I switch to tea. Unpaid spontanious fan-girling: Celestial Seasonins is a favorite. Depending on the weather and time of year, it might be cinnamon-y (like Bengal Spice) or something fruity and zing-y like Red or Wild Berry Zinger, although I have been into GV Strawberry hibiscus lately too.

Before I curl up with a good book, wanted to pop in to let you know that the Tarot Turnover intuition exercise is up on the ko-fi members blog.

The Path through the Month reading will go up tomorrow morning.

Tarot Table membership includes a monthly newsletter, three card members only tarot reading only on the ko-fi blog, and random special offers.

Have a good evening everyone! Cheers!

Be careful what you ask for

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee, Today The Lovers card reminds us to be careful what we ask for, we just might get it.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

A few days ago, I put a few announcements just in the print blog with summer hours and how things stand now, in essence it was a post for me to get my proverbial ducks in their proverbial row and that we should all read it quick because my ducks are a bunch of anarchists and lining them up is closer to herding cats.

It turns out that today is one of those crazy duck kind of days, so no reels, shorts, or tiktoks. It’s also a lesson in being careful what you ask for. It’s true that you just might get it.

That’s what the Lover’s card is really about. Sure, there is a lot of steamy romance misconceptions about the card out there, but that’s not the core of it. If you want the get-married card, look for the two of cups. If there is a relationship connection with the lovers card I’d put it in the realm of pure lust, playing the field as the saying goes, and figuring out what you really want from your love life but not about an enduring healthy relationship with any one particular person.

That being said, the Lovers card has application in any part of life. It is about deepest desires. Do you want a long term committed relationship or do you want insert-any-warm-body here companionship? What do you want from your job: a paycheck or fulfilling work or some combination of the two? The same thing applies to anything you want in any facet of life. Sometimes it is all one giant multiple choice test question. Do you want this, that, both or neither.

Deciding what you really want is a critical first step in getting it.

In my experience, it usually turns out to be one of those little bits of both , middle way, yin and yang together solutions. It’s what puts the Tao in Tao Craft Tarot.

There are, however, times when things get black and white. Usually it is the bald faced goodness, yes or the oh-heck-no answers that spark the strongest emotional response. That response can be as telling as the card or the reading.

If you get a white hot flare of anger or rejection when you see a card or get a particular answer in a reading, that tells you what you really want. That tells you that you already knew the answer to what you want or you wouldn’t instinctively reject the card so hard.

If you know what you want, it is easier to get it. If you know what you really deep-down want, then you can’t kid yourself about it. If you know what you really deep down want, you can’t sugar coat the hard parts or BS your way through it.

That’s why the Zombie Cat yes/no layout is far and away one of my favorites. I use it for myself as much as any other, maybe more than any other. It echos the I-ching three coin readings. It can be a clear frying pan to the face kind of reading. It lets you know when to stop screwing around and come face to face what you really want and the buried decisions that you have already made for yourself. The i-ching notion of “changing lines” which are lines that are SO yin or SO yang they can easily tip into their opposite. That’s what the dots in the yin yang symbol are about. Each thing, in its extreme holds the seed of its opposite.

If you read the cards individually in addition to the top level yes or no answer, you can get a lot of nuance and guidance out of the whole thing. The Zombie Cat part makes it light and fun and snarky and playful in the process. I use it all the time as an ice breaker when I am doing fortune teller entertainment at events, like the one at CMU recently. I’ll sit and do yes-no readings for any silly little thing that pops into my head, like will the Pens win the Stanley Cup this year. The answer is always yes to that one, by the way, whether the cards say it or not because this is Pittsburgh and they are the Pens, after all. On an energy level, it sets the right playful, entertainment vibe for a “fortune teller booth.”

The Lovers card asks us to take a hard, honest look at what we really want. The yes or no layout is a good tool to help gain that focus and clarity. That’s the be careful part.

If you tweek the old adage to say be CLEAR about what you want BECAUSE you are PROBABLY going to get it, then you are suddenly living in a whole different universe and it is a pretty good place to be.

Thank you so much for reading and listening. See you at the next sip!

The blog and the podcast are not monetized and depend on audience support. If you are enjoying these Tarot readings, please visit the Tao Craft Tarot page on ko-fi and consider becoming a Patron of the Tarot Arts to get exclusive content and members-only special offers. Peace Tarot is a short ebook about daily meditation Tarot. Proceeds from the sale of Peace Tarot in the ko-fi shop will be donated to Doctors Without Borders USA during 2022. Both ko-fi proceeds and private readings ordered on the blog website support the creation of the blog and podcast.

Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments are always, always appreciated!

Ride and Abide

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, ride and abide with the Knight of Cups.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the knight of cups. I’m using the Alleyman’s Tarot deck, with the knight of cups card by Lacy Martin & Christine Scanlon.

The knight of cups has a little bit of surface contradiction to it. Knights are action oriented, while cups are water and emotions. At first glance, the obvious interpretation would be put your feelings into action.

That might be the case for you, that is the right thing for some days, but I don’t get a sense that is the message we need today. That isn’t the overall vibe I’m getting this morning.

Card reversals pop to mind a little here too. It’s a fair question. If this is about NOT acting on something, why wouldn’t the knight card be reversed?

We’ve talked about this in previous episodes where the card was reversed. Reversals aren’t all that. Like I said then, I take all aspects of the card into consideration during a reading be it positive, be it negative, be it neutral be it what have you. Today’s card is an example of that multifaceted consideration of an upright card.

There is nothing blocked, turbulent, complicated or cautioning about this energy message, so the card is not reversed. It sounds a little like a double negative when we talk about it this way. It’s sort of like the cartoon where a student tries to trick the teacher into letting him out of class by asking to please not never be dis-excused to the restroom or something like that.

“Sit down Carl!”

It also reminds me of a TikTok that I watched earlier today from Senator Cory Booker. If you have access, I encourage you to look for it and watch it too. It posted on Tuesday April 26, 2022 and was captioned “How I learned a lesson in nonviolence.” In it he talks about how emotions inform us less about the people and situations that provoke them and more about the places where we need to heal and grow. He wanted to act, but instead found a way to nonviolently abide with the situation and his emotions about it. Again, I urge you to find it and watch it and hear Senator Booker’s wisdom in his own words in this short but powerful video.

Here is another less elegant, less kind, less wise but perhaps more relatable example. It imagery is closer to older decks like Marseille and Waite Smith decks. On these you have your standard issue knight in shining armor on horseback, so you can read in all the usual tropes about chivalry and defensive honorable combat and so on. He is holding a chalice, which presumably holds water or wine or some drink.

Now, bring in a fairly well known anime. In the early seasons of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, our hero Jonathan had to fight an enemy while holding a goblet of wine without spilling any in order to graduate to the next level of his Sendo (Hamon) training. Good-guy hero in action with a glass of wine: See the similarities?

You have to be fully accepting and comfortable with your cup of wine to fight without spilling anything. You have to be fully comfortable and accepting of your emotions to move with them without sloshing your stuff all over other people. In short,make friends with your emotions as you move through your day.

Today’s advice isn’t to act ON our emotions but rather act WITH them. Today is a day to ride AND abide.

Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support including likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments.

Thanks again. I’ll see you at the next sip!

This blog and podcast is not monetized and depends on your support. If you enjoy these readings, please visit the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page to become a Patron of the Tarot Arts and get exclusive Tarot content, intuition building exercises, members-only special offers and more. Membership proceeds support the blog-cast.

Today’s Accomplishment

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today is a day. Having one is an accomplishment!

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the four of swords.

There are reasons for all of the lore around Tarot decks.

Bottom line, they are bits of heavy paper with pictures on them. Full stop.

It’s not the cards, it’s the person using them and how they are used. They are the big theater screen where we can project our intuition and make it easier to see. They are a giant mirror that reflects ourselves so we can see that better too.

The genius in Pamela Smiths treatment of the minor arcana number cards is that she hits on very archetypal, foundational, core ideas. It’s hard to improve them. So, so many decks are rightfully derived from that body of work. Before Smith’s work, as I understand it, most decks had pips…a grouping of the suit’s symbols…instead of fully fledged images like the ones she created.

Some of the cards are fairly consistent across all of he derived decks. The three of swords is a good example. Almost every three of swords that I’ve seen has some iteration of heart and swords and something getting stabbed. The four of swords has much more variation. In the RWS deck, you see a knight in repose, taking a lil’ nap with all of his favorite pointy objects, no stabbing in sight. Mark Evans, artist for the Witches Tarot, depicts a grumpy looking lady with one sword in hand, dress swirling to denote movement and activity, with the other three swords close by. It’s not a particularly restful image. Here Lenny Magner give us four disembodied heads stabbed with swords for the Alleyman’s Tarot. The faces look sleepy, possibly dead, and winds up being more disconcerting than restful. Seven Dane Asmund’s interpretation of the card resonates with this image. The Alleyman’s Notebook interprets it as having to do with self-doubt, where he writes “nothing sticks like the daggers we put in ourselves.”

As disparate as it all seems, all of these different images fit together like pieces of a bigger picture.

Think of the ubiquitous and sometime slightly annoying email courtesy of telling people to “have a great day.”

Not every day is great. Some days are a hot mess. Other times you need to turn down the wattage and have just a day. Any day. A no big deal, kinda routine, go make the donuts day. Those days are as great as any other. When we expect perfection from ourselves, it is all too easy to slip into stabbing ourselves in the head with self-doubt. A little rest and repose from self-imposed expectations can be a wonderful thing. Even the Witches Tarot sword swinging grumpy girl has a part to play. External activity, working and adulting still has to happen which covers the action aspect of the swords cards in general. Sometimes you have to, as the shoe commercials used to say, just do it. Swords are also associated with intellect and the mind. That is the kind of rest and repose the four of swords talks about today.

Give being your own worst critic a rest.

Nevermind great. Sometimes just having a day is an accomplishment.

Thanks so much for reading and listening! I’ll see you at the next sip!

The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page and become a Patron of the Tarot Arts for exclusive content, special offers, and private readings.

Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows, private reading orders, questions and comments are always, always, appreciated.

The deck pictured is the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission.

Hawkeye’s Head

Wth the YouChoose Interactive Tarot on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast you do just that: choose. You choose when to read and watch. You choose which card and how to apply it.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

To start the week, let’s do a “you choose” style reading. It’s Monday morning here, so naturally a look at the energies for the week ahead is top of mind. You can use the card you choose to look ahead to any day or any week at any time you see this, or you can use it as a general guidance meditation or get some clarity about a particular topic or question. As alway, you choose.

There is a video of the real world card draw above if you are reading the blog, or on the spotify version of the podcast if I can get it to work. If you are listening to the podcast, imagine a circle, a star and a square. Pick a shape to pick your card. Choose from circle, star or square. You can pause the video or podcast if you need more time to think about it. Then restart to see which card goes with the shape you chose; circle, star or square.

Or, on the blog, just keep reading.

Circle: Six of Wands. Be generous and kind to yourself when it comes to mental and spiritual things. Don’t waste brain cells on worry. Stressful times need balance. If you have been extra active or extra stressed, you might have to deliberately be more quiet or more isolated than is usually your nature to balance things out. The six of wands is often associated with peace after war, calm after struggle. Think of this card as the mental and spiritual equivalent of taking a nap after a hard workout at the gym. The strongest hurricanes have the lowest pressure in the center eye of the storm. Be the eye of the hurricane.

Star: Ten of Swords. When life gets you down, it’s ok to down stay there a minute and gather your thoughts before getting up like the unstoppable melty-metal terminator robot that you are. The point isn’t that you get up in a dramatic martyr-like show of strength. The point is to get up at your best and ready to function at your best despite past failures. Sometimes the point is to get up at all.

Square: Justice. Work smarter, not harder. Detachment, balance, and level-headedness are your friends. The Justice card is a card of wisdom. It’s hard to make really profound, life altering decisions on the fly. Sometimes following your impulse, intuition and gut instinct is the exact right thing to do. If you chose this card – now is not the time for that sort of thing. Now is a time for pondering, intellect and logic. It’s like the six of wands folks just heard: the most powerful hurricanes have the lowest pressures in the center eye. You need to be the eye of the hurricane, too.

Taken together, the energy this week seems to be asking for cooler heads and calmer emotions to prevail. Keep some humor about it all. A little light humor can go a long, long way in diffusing fear and anxiety, so keep some dad jokes at the ready. You just might be the one who needs them.

Remember Hawkeye’s wise observations on the TV show MASH? Use your head, like Hawkeye. This week’s cards remind me of the time he said “If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, then you probably haven’t checked with your answering service lately.”

Thanks for listening! I’ll see you at the next sip!

The blog, podcast and YouTube channel are not monetized and depend solely on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on Ko-fi. Shop sales, commissioned readings, and memberships all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. Your likes, subs, shares, private reading orders, questions and comments are always appreciated!

Weekend Tarot Turnover 23 April 22

Hi guys! Welcome to the weekend turnover. It’s Saturday morning, time to read a card together over a cuppa coffee. This time I sip, and you stretch your intuition to read the card. 

Since this is members only exercise now, let’s try and make it as valuable of a post as we can. AS ALWAYS I would love to hear what you think and what you want to do on any platform but it goes double for everyone sitting around the Tarot Table. Tell me what Tarot (or other related) content you want and I’ll do my best to create it.

Let me grab my cards and pull one for us to work with today….

Members can read the rest on the ko-fi blog.

Want to learn DIY Tarot reading while getting loads of other member benefits? Join us at the Tarot Table for weekly one card meditation Tarot reading practice. Your questions are welcome and I’ll coach you through the membership blog – it’s like taking a kitchen table class with a group of friends and lots of one to one attention.

Other Tarot Table benefits include:

  • FREE copy of PeaceTarot ebook when you join
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The Makings of Magic

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day (or evening) in the time it takes to sip from your coffee (or tea). Today: The Alleyman’s Tarot Lightning in a bottle and the makings of magic

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today we are drawing from the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund of Publishing Goblin LLC, used with permission. It’s a big deck, with one booster pack already in it and yes, you bet I’m planning on getting the other booster packs if possible.

I’m not a collector by nature, but I’ve been around collectors and I understand the passion. It’s not a greed thing or a materialistic thing. It’s a surround yourself with symbols of something you love thing. As a professional Tarot reader and Tarot writer slash blogger decks appeals to the maker part of me. It’s a “right tool for the right job” kind of vibe. On one hand they are a collection of specialized precision tools, yet on the other hand “every tool is a hammer” as the Adam Savage book puts it.

I know some Tarot readers who have dozens of decks. The Alleyman’s Tarot is my eleventh. I’m enjoying it even more than expected. It is a virtuoso deck, that pushes your comfort zone just by the vast array of tones, images and artwork. It’s also challenging by virtue of the cards like this one that are absolutely gorgeous, but not traditional RWS or lenormand symbolism. I can’t imagine anyone with the wherewithal to collect well over one hundred decks, but the vast array of different cards all beautifully curated by the creator gives you a taste of exactly that. Seven Dane Asmund has pushed all of our Tarot reading envelopes. Now it is up to us to haul it back in.

I’ve been watching the new season of the Witcher, so the Mages of Artuza came quickly to mind when I saw the lightning in a bottle card – specifically the scene where initiates were in a cave with a hole in the roof during a thunderstorm and were required to capture lightning in a bottle in order to become fully fledged Mages.

The phrase “lightning in a bottle” has been around much longer than TV shows. Generally, it means sudden, unexpected, unconventional but huge success at something rare, at something once thought nearly impossible. Lighting in a bottle is a get rich from YouTube, put a ding in the universe type of luck-meets-skill achievement.

Reliable origins of idioms like this one are just as hard to find. A quick search of the google machine gives you the idea that it refers to eighteenth century experiments with electricity like Benjamin Franklin’s kite and Leyden jars. Leyden jars are conductive material on either side of non-conductive glass in such a way that it will hold a small electrical charge. It used to be party entertainment to get a little spark from them, kind of like scuffing your sock feet across the carpet and touching a door knob on purpose. In the poetic language of the day, those little sparks were literally lightning in a bottle.

The Alleyman’s Notebook that accompanies the deck connects this card with a situation that can’t be forced. That interpretation fits in with the pop culture analogy. You can’t MAKE lightning strike. You can’t MAKE opportunities happen but you can position yourself in such a way as to be in the conditions that more favorable for the right opportunity to happen. You can put yourself in a mental and physical space to take full advantage of it if it does.

You can’t make lightning strike any given place at any given time. Putting real world electrocution aside for a moment, if you stand on an iron rich rock near salt water ocean with your arm up in the air during a thunderstorm, there is a better chance that you, the lightning and a bottle will all wind up in the same place at the same time.

There is a practical, mundane, banal side of catching lightning in a bottle. It may seem lucky or miraculous, but the most unlikely success still has elements of practical intellect and persistent effort. As Thomas Edison famously said “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. Lightning in a bottle is random luck plus the courage and cleverness to take advantage of unexpected opportunity with a healthy dose of effort to follow it all through to fruition. These are the elements of mundane magic available to anyone.

There is one more element. A subtle one, the one that makes you into a lighting rod and gives you the power to contain it in the bottle. This is the part that makes the apprentice into the sorcerer. It’s the part that takes us back to the rainy rocks at the witch school of Artuza.

Harmonize with nature.

Lau Tzu gave us this advice in the Tao Te Ching a long, long, long time ago. If you are a grower by nature and you are in a sunny field, plant as you wish. If you are by the sea, step out onto the rainy rock and lift your bottle to the sky with confidence.

Thank you for reading and listening. The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page to become a Patron of the Tarot Arts which gives you access to exclusive content, private email readings and members-only special offers. Proceeds support the production of these free to access posts and episodes. Of course your likes, subs, shares, follows, reading orders, questions and comments are always, always appreciated.

See you at the next sip.