Tag: pittsburgh tarot reader

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: July 12-19

It’s still summer allergy season, and my voice is showing it today. This week, the YouChoose Interactive reading is going to be a hybrid of blog post and YouTube video like we usually do during the week for the “Today’s Tarot” posts.

But it works the same. Pick a card. Choose on impulse, or if you want more time, pause the video then restart to see the reveal. Try not to read ahead if you want the full interactive, just-for-you experience.

Either way, even if you get a glimpse of the writing below, at least you know that this post, like all of them, is a reflection of a real-life, real-cards, random card drawing. Just like my InkMagic handwritten pen-and-paper Tarot readings, you get the best of both worlds: old school physical cards meets the convenience of internet access.

It doesn’t happen often, but two of the cards are reversed. If you pick one of them, please read this post about card reversals along with the short reading about this week’s energy for you.

Left: King of Swords. The energy here matches with the air-element, mentality & intellect connotations of the card. There isn’t as much of an outward leadership energy. It is more of inward sense of responsibility. Be a leader of yourself, for yourself…the king of your inner world. The cutting edge of the sword comes to attention and I hear “cut away the chaff” Cut through the noise and unnecessary details “cut to the chase” and get to the heart of the matter this week. It’s a good time for root cause analysis.

Center: Queen of Wands (reversed). Don’t hold back the joy. Celebrate your authentic self, and be joyful in other people’s authentic self expression too. Related post: Something Fabulous This Way Comes.

Right: Nine of Pentacles (reversed) Don’t draw things out past their prime – bring this puppy in for a landing. There is an energy of wrapping up, gathering up or gathering in. Pick up the leftovers and fall out and take inventory of all you have on hand. Sweeping up the confetti, and seeing how much glitter is left can help you plan your next parade. Finish, put the final touches and polish on a project. Finish something well and on a high note in order to build a good feeling and strong foundation for your next project or the next big phase of something in progress. Lots of career and work energy around this card.

Best Evidence of Gravity

“And then, for fun, he pretended that he was climbing down the wall. He did it almost instantly in his mind, convinced himself against the best evidence of gravity.” – Ender’s Game by Orsen Scott Card

I read Ender’s Game several years ago. It reminded me of the movie version of Heinlien’s Starship Troopers, but with a completely unnecessary, gratuitous final chapter. The final chapter blew it in my opinion, but like everyone else, my favorite parts where the zero gravity games and Ender’s first person descriptions of spatial orientation in that environment.

Apply that thinking to Tarot.

When Ender was floating around in zero gravity, did it change him as a person when his feet pointed in a different direction? Does the meaning of card change if you sit facing north instead of south? The Earth moves roughly what? 20 miles per second around the sun. If a card’s position in physical space really made that much difference in a card’s meaning, the meaning would change second by second wouldn’t it?

Maybe it does, but that’s for another day.

If a client is sitting directly across from me, every card that is upright from my point of view is reversed from theirs, and vice versa. A sideways card to both of us would be perfectly upright to someone sitting to the side. Early in the book, as he first travels from Earth to space, Ender realized that the names of surfaces and their function is determined by gravity. Gravity is what made any given flat surface the name of floor vs wall or ceiling. Gravity is what defined the subjective experience of down vs up or sideways. The same applies to a Tarot layout. Before you can consider reversals, you have to have some defining anchor point, some relative reference point (yeah, that kind of relative, as in Einstein’s theory of Relativity.)

The obvious reference point is the person doing the reading. But even when you have that clear definition of what a reversal IS, does really MEAN anything? Classically, a card reversal changes the meaning of the card somehow.

We’ve come to a time in human technology and civilization where we can (an in my opinion should) think larger. It’s time to take Tarot big picture. An obscenely rich guy just went to space on a lark yesterday. It’s time to connect Tarot and intuition to energy rather than physicality, to a cosmic perspective rather than an earth-bound surface one.

Even without considering upright vs reversed card position, there are lots of meanings and keywords bundled into any given card. It takes practiced intuition to draw out the right meaning for the moment and the message.

Your own good internal intuition is the way to understand reversals the same as any other meaning for a card. Reversals don’t change the meaning, they enhance it.

The reversal is about the energy flow around the card, not the card meaning itself. All the good/bad, positive/negative, advising/cautioning aspects of a card’s meaning should be considered normally, regardless of upright vs reversed presentation. In this case, think of the energy flow like water flow. In an upright card, the flow is like a river, generally moving in one direction. The flow might be fast or slow, deep or shallow. Sometime, in some places, under some conditions, the flow swirls in circles, even flows backwards or sideways. Usually that happens when large rocks or bridge pilings that block the natural flow. Reversed Tarot cards hint at a block in the natural flow. Reversed Tarot cards hint at swirls, blockage and back flow connected to all of a card’s potential meanings.

The reversal of a card in a readings isn’t a definite reversal from good to bad. It could just as easily be a reversal from bad to good. Stagnation could be sweeping into a new lane of progress. A reversed card is a hint to look at energy flow and larger context.

It isn’t about the rote direction of your feet. It is about the best evidence of gravity.

Today’s Tarot: Something Fabulous This Way Comes

Drag queens are the best

It was years ago, but once I was hired to do Tarot readings for a local theater group’s party. The group included a few drag performers. I don’t know if any of them enjoyed the Tarot readings, but by the time it was all said and done I was happy to my absolute core. The energy in the room was bright and glittering and it was an honor to work with all of them. Everyone there was the definition of fabulous.

If it is OK with them, give a drag queen a hug and return some of the good vibes they so naturally and generously give. It will make your day.

Today’s card reminded me of that experience, which turned my thinking toward joyous, jubilant, glorious, gleeful, authentic self expression.? What would happen if we expressed ourselves TO ourselves with all the exuberance and fun of a drag cabaret?

Some people are natural extroverts and performers. No matter what their art form may be…theater, dance, film, live music….performing is the air that they breath and sometimes their livelihood too. For the rest of us, performance is more stress-inducing than life-giving. But, I wonder, what if we spent a little time expressing our authentic selves in a performance for an audience of one…oneself that is.

How would your day (or evening) be if you allowed yourself a little time to bask in your own quiet, queenly fabulousness. Find one darn little thing that you like about yourself and wallow in it. Amp it up as high the hairdo on an episode of Drag Race and BE fabulous, at least in your own mind just for a few minutes.

Now take that feeling of fabulousness and use it to fuel your connection to life, to love, to compassion, to everyone you care about.

In less time than it takes to paint your nails, something fabulous this way comes.

Today’s Tarot: Protect the Treasure

Today is a blustery kind of day for our card’s energy.

Some skeptics dismiss intuition and its tools like Tarot because the card meanings are vague and inconsistent. They are, but not because they are invalid, but because they are ephemeral. The cards are an ever-adapting look at ever-changing energies from one point of view within the flow of time. They are a localized look at a larger, fluid, energetic, dynamic system. That’s why they guide rather than predict. Saying Tarot is invalid because of inconsistent or vague card meanings is like saying the weather report is wrong because it changes every day.

Tarot is a creative prompt, not an immutable law of the universe.

So which prompt, which card meaning is right for you of all people and today of all days? THAT is where tools like Tarot, runes, numerology, astrology, etc meet their limit. They help us access our innate intuition, but they can never substitute for it. The image that comes to mind is a little like dry leaves in a whirlwind. There is a blustery swirl of meanings and energies here. Only you can know which leaf to grab out of the whirlwind of potential meanings. The word ‘local’ steps forward too. The local energy and mood is the one that needs our attention today. Today the card’s guidance is to focus on the treasure within and to trust your own understanding – even more than usual.

In other words the card’s message today is exactly that to trust and protect the inner treasure of your own good intuition. Intuition is usually the purview of cups cards and the water element, but in this case it is more about the protection (an earth element energy) and solid trust more than talking about the intuition itself.

It’s about the the real world, practical protection and application of your intuition. It’s a meatspace thing to borrow from William Gibson’s writing.

The four of pentacles has a variety of meanings. The four part can be associated with steadiness and stability, like the four legs of a chair or table. That’s where we get the protective, steady, trustworthy connotations for the card. I’m told that Chinese culture avoids fours because the word for four sounds like the word for die (but with different characters and tonal pronunciation) I wonder if that – energetically more than culturally or linguistically – is a connection to the more negative connotations for the four of pentacles like greed, and unwarranted miserliness.

Either way, try to think of the physical space actions that your intuition may need today. Do you need to set some atmosphere to help you hear the quiet whispers of intuition and spirit? Is this the day to get that incense or candle you’ve been saving for a special day? Is this the day to unplug from social media and find some physical quiet in order to feed your inner quiet? Many times we have a tendency to relagate those tangible actions to certain days of the week, or phases of the moon or what have you. Don’t wait. Do for your intuition. Guard it, protect your inner self from any toxic people or energies that may be lurking. The leaf for you from today’s whirlwind of meanings might be to reflect, like a bright coin…reflect or disperse any negative or toxic energies away from you. I suggest Ted Andrew’s excellent book Psychic Protection as well as the protective exercises in Mat Auryn’s recent book Psychic Witch (whether you consider yourself to be a part of the pagan or witch community or not, it is still a good, helpful visualization.) Black tourmaline comes to mind as a protective energy to wear or carry. It’s a do your homework kind of day. Part of the message is that it is up to you to look at the local energies and act to protect your inner energies and intuition if needed.

When the energy start repeating and going in circles like this, that is a good cue that the essential message is complete. I see a bow in deference to your knowing.

This is a start. This is a prompt. Now it is up to you to connect and protect. Connect to your intuition, connect your intuition to your individual real world situation, and protect your energy.

Summer update

  • New episodes are up on Clairvoyant Confessional podcast! Some episodes are recorded, some auto-converted from blog posts, but all are available on Anchor fm, Spotify, Googlepodcasts, Stitcher and more.
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  • Individual / Party in-person Tarot returns in the fall. Masking may be required. Stay tuned for updates as we see how the Delta variant thing evolves.
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Today’s Tarot: Inner Fire, Outer Flow

To have the flow, you gotta have the fire

Today’s card connects with yesterday’s post, but as much to the “why bother” thread of it as the part about clarity. Even though we are looking at single cards on separate days, it gives you a glimpse of how it works for multiple cards in a single layout. These kinds of connections between cards is where rubber meets the road when it comes to larger Tarot readings. You can memorize individual cards all day long, but when you do a multiple card layout unless you can knit them all together into a coherent message, you are missing a big part of the reading’s value. That’s where experience and a professional reading can come in handy.

Today’s card has a very active, additive sort of energy because of that connection. That’s how it works, in my style of Tarot reading. We start with a foundation and build. Sometimes, there is a yin, inward energy and reading will peel off layers to get to the heart of the message. Even though it is a single card, today has a yang, outward sort of message where layers build to find the totality of the message, a little like the related post “Growing Ogres.”

At the base we have the page of wands. Pages are about learning, a very growth energy in and of itself. Wands has to do with inner fire. Add to that the thread from yesterday. Why bother? Why not languish and float and experience and be? No reason, except that it isn’t our nature. The universe is put together in a slightly different way.

To have flow, you mush have fire.

If there is no energy, molecules don’t move. Absolute zero temperature is defined as the point where all atom lose all physical movement. There are quantum physics things going on, but I don’t pretend to understand any of that. But the high school take away is that for molecules to move, there has to be some degree of heat. For that tiniest bit of flow there has to be that tiniest bit of heat/fire. It is in the fabric of the universe for fire and flow to go together.

Flow is an interesting idea. On one hand it is yang…moving not still, outward, not inward. On the other hand it is yin in that “going with the flow” is passive and takes a certain inner peace to not fight the current – both literally and figuratively. Hence my admiration for surfers and surf culture despite being a land locked suburbanite. Flow is a very Taoist thing, encompassing both yin and yang. Flow is in our nature, so having direction and energy is part of our nature.

So yes, bother. That’s what the quote from FL Lucas yesterday meant by “take trouble.” Take the time and go to the trouble and bother to find your clarity, go in your direction, walk your talk, grow, flow.

Learn your direction. Gain your clarity. But the other half our nature is to follow the flow that clarity and understanding dictates.

Life and movement go hand in hand. It is our nature to have inner fire and outer flow.

Today’s Tarot: Clarity

They used to call a half caf skim milk latte a “why bother?”

Good question, and not just about coffee (she says as she sets down her double shot)

Don’t get me wrong…not every single solitary thing in life has to have a point, purpose or goal. Just being, abiding, enjoying is reason enough for anything. At the same time, life without some degree of point, purpose or goal leaves one languishing in a sea of ennui.

Sips

With anything that you do a lot or a long time, in my case Tarot, it pays to revisit the point, purpose and goal of it every now and again. What’s the use of Tarot? What good is it doing anyone? Why bother?

I think the answer is in the reason why we ask questions like this: clarity.

If something is going to have a pointed, productive goal-oriented role in our life, we have to have clarity about what that goal or purpose really is. The purpose of Tarot is to gain clarity. An yup, that is rooted in the same ‘clair’ as in ‘clairvoyant’ which literally means clear sight ability. We use our intuition and the mental-imaginative echoes of our senses to cut through the noise of daily life and all of its twist and turns – expected and unexpected alike.

A number of cards have the quest for clarity at the forefront of their meanings and connotations. The seven of cups, for example, points out times of decision paralysis, an abundance of choices and the possibility we are overthinking things. The advice has an outward, yang quality. The advice is to gain clarity by simplification. It is an active solution, to go out and cut away the unnecessary.

Here the energy is more yin, zen and passive. Sometimes these solutions are more challenging when other needs are pressing, like a job, income, or general frustration. With the two of wands we find clarity by waiting, watching. It is advice straight from the Tao Te Ching: In a river or pond, churned up water is cloudy, but if it is given time and allowed to be quiet the mud will settle out. The water becomes clear.

When you read for yourself, you can read the cards for clarity.

When you read the cards for others, you read in service to clarity, namely helping them to find theirs.

It’s my mind, and I’ll change it if I want to

I know, I know…I said no more cutesy pants promotions

But thirty years of card reading is something. And I wanted to do something to commemorate it. Get ’em while you can. It’s prolly going to be the last cutesy pants promotion for the next thirty years.

Offer good for website purchases only. Poloicies and disclaimers apply.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Make Happy

NEW: $1.00 Tarot sale…get a five or seven card Tarot reading by email and pay 1.00 for each year of Tarot reading experience that I bring to your reading. Special price available until the autumn equinox, September 20, 2021