Tag: pittsburgh

Todays Tarot: Horizon

Keep a weather eye on the horizon, or so the pirates say.

At least that’s what they say in the movies, sometimes. Horizons are special, like any doorway, transition, or liminal space. The horizon is the visual boundary between earth and sky, between far, and too far to see.

The Two of Wands connotes just that kind of watchfulness. It isn’t change in progress like the Wheel, it isn’t foreboding, but much more like a routine boarder patrol, just keeping a casual eye on things. In today;s case, the energy is even more hopeful than that. It is more of a positive connotation, like waiting for success to come, like waiting for a package that you know is out for delivery, literally waiting for your “ship to come in” as the saying goes.

It resonates with this time of year. At the turn of the year and the winter holidays, we always seem to take a collective look back over the year and at the same time turn a hopeful eye forward. Next year can’t suck as bad as this one, can it?

And so we eye the time horizon with hope.

Sometimes a joy, sometimes a sadness, sometimes a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, right now is the eternal horizon. Right now is the boundary line and liminal space between past and future. Today is a good day and this is a good time of year to stand, quietly watch, and keep a weather eye on it all.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Knuckle Down, Buckle Up and Get Cozy

Interactive Tarot Reading: You choose the card, guidance for the week ahead.

It’s that time of year where time flies by far, far to fast. How is everyone feeling on the energy side of things? I don’t know why the general America-energy has come in so many weather metaphors this year, but that continues. It feels like there has been a shift. From a map with lots of scattered tornadoes all over the place, to hurricanes on the horizon, to now a snowstorm. There is such enormous relief about the election, combined with such grief and anxiety about the pandemic. It is like admiring the beauty of a deep snow while worrying what you’ll do if the electricity goes out and if there will be enough food if you get snowed in. It’s an odd energy as I read the cards today, underneath each cards message. That being said, let’s get to those cards. Pause the video if you want to take a moment, then restart to see the reveal, or just pick a card on impulse. Here we go…

Left: King of Pentacles. Kings are always to some degree about leadership. Pentacles or Coins are earth element, down to earth, practical and real-world, nut-and-bolts level stuff. There is a big sense of protection or protective energy. First impulse is to say protect what you have, budget or anything really, err on the conservative side given the choice. Here is why it really helps for the YouTube videos and the blog here to compliment each other. My brain really is hard wired to be a writer, I suppose. Keyboards and pens really do hotwire right in to a deeper intuition some days. This is one of those days. I missed it earlier but there is a sense of spirit guide or guardian angel or something on that order. There is a second sub-wave here. In addition to the obvious physical – realm message, there is a reassurance that you are among the protected. Even when the money and physical realm aspect of things seem terrible, there is an esoteric protection, a heart protection. “Where there is Love” comes through here. You are connected and protected and loved on a deep esoteric, energetic, subtle emotional/mental level of things. Reach for that, if nothing else this week.

Center: Seven of Pentacles. “You reap what you sow” is both a threat and a promise. Sow bad seeds, give neglect, and that is what you will harvest…but inherant to that is the promise that there WILL be a harvest of some kind if you but plant the seed, good or bad.

Like was said earlier, I do sense a shift in energies. It’s not the red lights and sirens, ring every single empath’s bell sort of energy from last winter. This is more a crazy swirl of often contradictory energies. In my mind’s eye I see the general zeitgeist energy as just that…big snowflakes in the wind of a night time snow storm (stay safe all of you in the midwest that are / have recently experienced this for real)

The advice is clearly to plant and plan. Prepare for the weather to break on the energy level of things. Hold the space open for what you hope to achieve. There is sense of movement, almost like a roller coaster. Hang on, the turn, the shift the end to stagnation is coming. Be ready. Be ready to plant when the moment is right, because things are likely to grow quickly if you do.

Right: Queen of Wands. Queen cards embody leadership too, but a much more nurturing kind. While the King defends the boarders, the queen makes sure there is enough food. That isn’t to say historical, actual, monarchies worked that way…Tarot is symbolic and archetypal. Classically, the message is one of self-care to build the strength and reserves to care for others, but today the energy is more nesting, home-and-hearth, “facilitate the cozy.” In this iteration, it is care, for self and others and everyone within cookie flinging distance. Whether you are male or female, this week is your chance to shop smart, buy the extra milk and toilet paper and put the kids in front of a Christmas special with a bowl of popcorn, pour yourself a cup of mulled something or another and put your feet up. You can do it. You got this. You are the Queen of Cozy this week.

Thanks for reading and watching. If you would like to unleash the hot-wired keyboard intuition brain onto an email reading just for you, you can order any time 24/7 on the HOME page.

Tarot and Test Tubes 2020

Welcome to my happy place, located squarely at the intersection of science and spirit.

As I see it, science and spirituality are not at odds. Ever. Science and religion? That is another rant for another day. The thing that makes sense of it all for me is to think of it in terms of human mind and consciousness interacting with this three (four) dimensional time-space universe which we inhabit.

Science is the best thing we have for learning about, understanding and dealing with the stuff out there, outside of ourselves. Science is the best tool we to understand our place in the outer world. Science is not quite so great at dealing the extremely complex and often random stuff in here, within ourselves. Spirituality is learning about, understanding and dealing with the inner world. When we see science and spirituality as complimentary, not mutually exclusive, those two worlds are connected. Both science and spirituality together teach us that in-here and out-there are one seamless part of a far greater whole.

I can’t remember if it was the book or the PBS series, but this reminds me of Carl Sagan in Cosmos:

“If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.”

Carl Sagan

If the physical world leans toward the patterned, scientific side of the in-between world, then the inner psyche seems to lean far more toward the complex side of the in-between. Scientific methods have given us psychology and psychiatry, but these are disciplines that are, in my opinion, better suited for problem solving. They first define (with debateable accuracy) mental and emotional health. Then they move on to solve problems from outside of that scientifically determined definition. For a healthy person, science and psycology’s definitions of a healthy life are profoundly unsatisfying and incomplete. Humans need art and beauty and a deep connection to the universe that science in its infancy lacked (and only since Einstein, as far as this interested layman can see, has begun to consider.) Humans need to create, imagine, and feel none of which can be be understood through the scientific method alone. Yes, science contains all of the awe, wonder and breathtaking beauty of human existence, but it is not the only path to it.

Science vs spirituality is by no means truth vs falsehood, proof vs assumptions. Sure they differ in the types of data sets they accept, but fundamentally they are both simply ways and methods of understanding and interacting with the grand everything of the Cosmos. Science deals with the physical but need not lack the emotional and esoteric. Spirituality deals with mind and consciousness but need not lack rationality and reason. Both are both, because both are human.

When loved ones are lost and hearts are in pain, hard science and cutting edge genetics won’t help. Masks and medicines can’t cure stress and mourning and heartache. That is the realm of spirit. This is where the tools and talents we use to face the unknown come into play. This is where we might have to get comfortable with a little not-knowing (related post: “I dunno“) Tarot can help with that.

Hare-brained, unproven, unscientific nonsense or wishful thinking won’t prevent or treat covid-19. People naturally, understandably fear the unknown and will fill in that knowledge gap with anything if times are desperate enough. Science is, nevertheless, our best tool for figuring out this crazy situation. Please, please watch the video (used with the permission of the creator.) It makes some sense out of the vaccine. It fixes that particular unknown. Then for the love of good sense and staying alive, get the vaccine when it is available to you. Until at least 3/4 of everybody is vaccinated, STILL wear a mask anytime you leave your home, stay six feet away from anybody you don’t already live with, and ffs wash your dang hands.

Menage A Tarot Podcast:

http://tun.in/pgZ6y

Time Lording Is Hard

It’s way easier said than done.

It is true that we are time lords in a sense, creating meaning and holidays at will. People created holidays in the first place, so we have the power to change them at will and then change them right back if we choose to do so.

Easy enough.

The hard part is the emotions, the pain of separation, the homesickness. Nurturing, closeness, being with those we love is a deep, primal need. It’s no wonder that language ties separation to physical illness; homesick, heartache. We can celebrate any darn holiday on any darn day in any darn way we want. It is, however, really hard to feel celebratory when the people are out of place.

Which is why people traveling and gathering at Thanksgiving last week in spite of the warnings and covid dangers is a tragedy in the making.

I understand what might drive people to do it. Heartache, homesickness, loneliness and separation are powerful motivators. I get it. I feel it when certain songs trigger certain associations with past events…we’ve all been there one way or another. We would do anything for one more holiday, one more moment with a loved one.

Why would you put something so precious so at risk when a small shift in perception and a shifting a man-made habit now could preserve the future? Time lords see bigger pictures and far beyond instant gratification.

I understand the need to be with loved ones and the pain of being separated from them at holidays, but at the same time I would undergo any exile in order to keep them safe and healthy. The only thing that takes precedence over the consuming desire to be with them is the desire to protect and care for them.

It’s hard, but you can celebrate your chosen holidays any damn time you want, twice if you take a notion. Celebrate all the way from Thanksgiving to Groundhog Day if you want to. You can bring celebration to any day you want. You can’t bring back the dead. The worst may still happen, but wouldn’t you want to know you did all that you could to prevent it?

The world card is a great comfort in these kinds of times. It shows us the bigger picture in terms of space in addition to time. It gives us that wider perspective we need in times like this. All of the cosmos is connected. As long as your loved ones are in the World, we are together for the holidays. Keep them them safe, keep them here. Stay here with us. Be safe. Be well. Take a look at the big picture, and take your place in that wider world. Time and space can’t take the togetherness from you when the whole wold is one place in a connected cosmos.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot Nov. 29 – Dec 5

I hope you all had a good week. I don’t know about you, but I’m still on turkey overload and enjoying the start of elfcon season. I don’t know why but it seems easier this year. I’m probably massively forgetting something. But with what I am remembering, the YouTube channel will definitely only post once, maybe twice a week, but hopefully the blog will be a bit more active. That I can do in between batches of cookies.

Left: Queen of Swords. Swords are intellect, and queens are nurturing leaders. Think. Help but help smart. Triage and mind your resources. It reminds me of something I once read about UNICEF. They are a good way to help because they have infrastructure in place, and know what is truly USEABLE in an area. If the help doesn’t match the need, you are either throwing paper towels at a flood or donating a high end laptop to a village that doesn’t have electricity. Don’t let ego or impulse trip up your naturally generous nature or helping impulse. I read a Tweet recently that has a valid point: before you send a donation to a senate race in another state, donate food to you local food bank. Supporting good public policy is critical to do long term good, but a meal for a hungry child in your own town is a much more urgent need. In short, put your efforts and energies where they are truly most needed, not necessarily where your first impulse goes, no matter how well intentioned that impulse might be.

Center: Three of Cups. Here’s that Richard Bach quote I was telling you about in the video. “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” This is a good time to celebrate the non-genetic family that means the most to you. They are pure gold in times when families of blood can’t (or choose not to for their own good) be together.

Right: Ace of Cups. Inspiration. This card comes with the mental image of a coin being dropped in a cup. Inspiration comes, it can’t always be sought after. Sleep on it. Put a problem aside just for a minute if you can. The something-else that you do, the other -thing that you think about just might inspire the answer you were seeking in the first place. Creativity has to do with connecting disparate dots as much single minded focus.

Happy week everyone!

The Niggles: Time Lords 2020

Emperor Tarot, magic spells and Time Lords

public domain card image via sacred-text.com

The idea of time niggles at me when it gets close to a new year. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Doctor Who. Consider this if you will: Time is arbitrary and a portion of time is as much under our control as it is for the fictional Gallifreyans.

Actually, not time itself, but rather the way we name and talk about time is arbitrary. This present moment is the one time under our control.

Right now for me it is a Friday night in November 2020. Cool. Gregorian is good. According to the Julian calendar, it’s something like two weeks ago. 2020 a crazy year? No problem – just call it 5780 as it is on the Hebrew calendar. Let’s hear it for 2563 B.E.!

“Time has no meanings except the ones we give.”

I honestly don’t remember if that is something I read, saw on a poster somewhere, or if is from one of the poems I chucked out in the final edit of Triquitera – but it captures the niggly idea about the arbitrary side of time. Take Thanksgiving, for example. It’s less the day than it is the things we DO. No doubt holidays are deeply tied to the time of year in their aesthetic and energy. I suspect it comes from a time when we celebrated the natural seasons rather than cultural or religious things. Thanksgiving is, essentially, a harvest festival. Regardless of season, couldn’t any gathering with family to enjoy a special meal be Thanksgiving? If you can’t celebrate on the exact day you usually celebrate, would it be any less meaningful if you did the exact same things with the exact same people a week later? Or months later?

Have you caught where this is going yet? Yes, I’m looking at you bare faced germ bags that value your individual fleeting entertainment over human life. Cultural events and social stuff change all the time. It won’t kill you to stay home, wear a mask and celebrate differently this year – but catching a potentially lethal contagious illness just might. Or kill someone you love. Or kill someone that someone else loves. If you put your “freedom to celebrate the holidays” over life and love, then you are a slave to present moment, not a master of it.

With the slightest effort we can all be Time Lords.

We are the ones to place meaning on time…we are powerful enough to observe and celebrate whatever thing at whatever time we choose, either individually or collectively. Thanksgiving or Christmas or what-have-you can happen any day or time that we say it happens. That’s exactly how it all started. Thanksgiving happens on the fourth Thursday in November in the U.S because the 1941 congress said so. Or it is celebrated the second Monday in October because Canada said so. Christmas is the 25th of December NOT because of anyone’s actual birthday, but because Emperor Constantine ordered it – probably as a tactic in archaic culture wars.

Holidays and traditions derive their meaning from the intense personal emotions and connections we place on them. If we give holidays their power, then we have the power to assign when and how they happen. If by necessity, the time and manner of celebrating a holiday has to change for the sake of human life, so be it. We have the power to change it. We have the raw power to imbue any time, any place and any activity with all the love, all the emotion, and all the meaning of a holiday. We have the power to help each other through the normal, natural feelings and disappointments that come in times of change and uncertainty. And we have the power to change it all right back again when the crisis is over. We can dominate time through compassion and adaptation. We can take time itself in our stride if only we have just the tiniest bit of the compassionate, protective strength that the Emperor card teaches.

Or, if you prefer, the lesson the Grinch teaches. Even if a green furry dude take all the stuff, the holiday still happens. Even if one year out of your life is different, the holiday still happens because your intention makes it so. Holidays happen inside of you, not out in the world in the best of times. If you give the day meaning, if you suffuse any time with emotion, meaning and commemoration, then that holiday – that time – is yours.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Home Is Where Your Nose Is

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating next week. For the holidays, remember the classic TV specials: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Charlie Brown and friends shows us that Thanksgiving can happen with any food, with any one (or alone.) Just like Whoville after the Grinch stole all the STUFF, the time, the holidays still come. Maybe next year we can better appreciate how the holidays always are for those who can’t gather with friends or family for whatever other non-pandemic reason every other year. Home is where the heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. This year, home is where you nose is …or it should be. The day will come and go with precisely the energy and import that you give it. If you give it bitterness and resentment because you have to change your usual plans in order to keep the people you love alive…then that is just what you will get – a day of bitterness and resentment. If you give the day the same good will and cheer that you always do, then you get a day of celebration regardless of circumstances. It’s about the people, not the circumstance. In this oddest of years, the best way to show love for the people you card about is to keep your nose, and any germs that might be lurking in it, home where you live.

Left: Six of Swords. Go with the flow. Obstacles are more perceived than actual, which goes right along with the rant about Thanksgiving. The art on the card tells the whole story of this energy and advice from the card. From the seated figure’s point of view, the swords are looming, perhaps intimidating obstacles, blocking the view at the very least. But the standing, rowing figure can see that their canoe is in wide open water, able to go in any direction, clear sailing and smooth water all the way to the distant shore. How good or bad this week is all depends on your perspective, and your willingness to look, steer, ride with the water’s flow.

Center: Queen of Pentacles. “Hearth and home” comes to mind. Since everyone and their nose will be home, do what you can to make the here and now, the home where we are, all just as comfy as possible. Make a round of hot cocoa for everyone. Pop a little popcorn, and set as much of a lighthearted tone as you can. If you just aren’t feeling it, that is ok. Honor the mood. Drawing from the Charlie Brown cartoon – be Snoopy. Use whatever is at hand to make as much relaxation and fun for everyone in your current bubblespace AND for yourself.

Right: Three of Swords. This is much of a watch-your-back card as the minor arcana has to offer. Watch out for pettiness, politics, family squabbles. This isn’t to the level of the Devil card, by any means. But look at it this way – if we all shelter at home, we are also sheltered from toxic disagreements and toxic energies whe might otherwise tolerate for the sake of the holiday. Don’t let them drag you down. Distance is a help for that in any year.

Wishing you all the very best of the season. Not sure how this coming week is going to go schedule-wise. I’m OPEN for the season for email readings. Being at home just us is pretty normal, so I don’t see any delays changes because of the holiday. It IS still that elfcon time of year, so I’m not sure what will happen with the socials and YouTube channel.

Don’t forget to comment with your ideas for naming the “Year Ahead” layout. The winning name will be announced Dec. 1. The best name suggestion gets a reading by email. Insert all disclaimers here.

I Still Dunno

from Bitmoji free app

I still dunno.

The Queen of Cups turned up again, and once again it feels like it is connected to process of facing the unknown.

The word “ponder” comes to mind. I don’t think I’m missing any big message from the Queen. I think she is back just because she has more to say, not because the original message is being missed. Maybe she is just hanging around to help us face the unknown with grace and wit and style. The mental image here is that the cup (rather than a symbol for plumbing psychological and spiritual depths, deep soul scrying) is now a cup of wine, of cheer in the face of challenges. It is an obscure reference, but I think of drunken monkey style Kung Fu or that scene in the anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure where the protagonist had to fight the bad guy attacking them without spilling his goblet of wine.

If you aren’t familiar with martial arts, you might think this is all about fighting and violence and wine. Not that there is anything wrong with wine. I could go for a nice chilled Riesling myself, but that’s not the point. That’s not where the energy of the card or the intuitive references are flowing. Flowing is the point of it, actually. Relaxed muscles move faster. A relaxed mind reacts quicker and with more clarity.

The fear of the unknown and and the fear of all of the bad stuff that we know can happen in life is as much of a challenge as the bad stuff itself. In other words, as President Roosevelt said, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Staring into the depths, into mysteries, into the unknown is staring into the fearsome. People come to psychic readings to remove the fear of the unknown with the illusion of predictions, the illusion of knowing. Psychics are psychics not because they see the future, but because they see the unknowable and help us move forward anyway.