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Keeping it low key while I’m keeping it simple. Here’s a little throwback card for our lazy, hazy summer Sunday afternoon.
Sometimes you need to circle around a problem to nab the solution from behind.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the Hanged Man. This card is different-looking from the usual Hanged man. You can see the card being drawn in the blog and on the YouTube channel. This particular card was created by Emma Daues for the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck. I uses a cat curled up in a space bubble turning and drifting endlessly to get at the same message as the better known Pamela Smith card. That oblique approach pretty much is today’s message.
Regardless of the deck or artwork you use, the Hanged man most often has to do with stagnation, frustration, feeling stuck, going in circles making no progress.
Circles have been a bit of a theme the past couple of days. Remember how the Page of Wands was circling around to the back and nabbing the point from behind? Today has a little bit of that energy too. Endless space circles certainly captures the stuck, stagnation aspect of the card.
Sometimes the Hanged Man is connected to self-sacrifice or fearless sacrifice. I don’t get any sense of that lesser known interpretation from our space cat at all. Although, I imagine a good sci fi writer could use a self sacrificing bubble cat in space as a story prompt and come up with something.
The main energy today lies with one of the most common messages I get with this. I suspect it is a very repeated idea because it is, in my opinion, the most useful one. This part of the card talks about seeing things from a different point of view.
As you think about problems or decisions turn things around. Turn it upside down. Kick the tires. Take outlandish options out for a spin mentally.
My all time favorite analogy for this energy is an interview I watched on TV once with one of the Disney “imagine -eers.” I can’t remember the gentleman’s name or any exact quotes but the essence of it was they would use physical models of new rides and attractions during the creative development process. A key they would use the model was for specific creative problem solving. If a problem turned up they would look at the physical model from physically different angles. They would stand on chairs and look down on it, sit on the floor and look up at it. I imagine they would circle around it too. A physical shift in perspective could spark inspiration for a creative solution or bring focus to a diffuse, poorly understood problem.
If there is something you are pondering, the Hanged Man reminds you to look at it from all sorts of angles. Circle around, maybe you need to nab the solution from behind. Turn around, see what the problem looks like behind you instead of perpetually chasing it down.
Thank you so much for reading and listening! I appreciate any likes, subs, shares, follows, questions, comments or feedback that you can spare. Comments on the blog are open.
The blog & podcast are not monetized, so we are working for the highest and best energy message, not for advertisers. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships, commissions and virtual coffees all support the creation of this free to access (almost) daily Tarot content.
Thank you again. See you at the next sip!
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: Strength from the major arcana and revisiting reversals
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it take to sip from your coffee.
Today’s card is Strength from the major arcana, inverted.
This is another good chance to give my standard issue speech about inverted or reversed cards. Reversed cards are ones that turn over upside down relative to the person doing the reading.
The relative to the person doing the reading part is, to my thinking, much more important than the upside-down, reversed or inverted part. The card is perfectly fine as it lies. I don’t mean to go all Obi-wan on you, but the reversal is specific to a certain point of view. To the person across the table, the card is right side up. The card is the card, the only difference is how you look at it.
The tradition is to change the meaning of a card to its opposite when it turns up reversed. Usually that so-called opposite is really the darker, less socially popular, or negative side of the card.
As I see it, that flip flop in the meaning runs the risk of letting a certain toxic positivity leak into our readings. Right side up cards are a bit easier to read from a pure physiologic, visual standpoint. I don’t know about you, but I have an innate bias toward right side up cards, just as a matter of identifying what the heck you are looking at.
Depending on where you stand in the room, all cards are always right side up or upside down. All the cards are always everything and that is part of Tarot’s inherent value. Tarot has value in the way it opens our mind and our thinking to all the possibilities, even the hard to look at upside down ones.
All the cards are everything all of the time.
My favorite quote from the original 90s version of the movie The Craft is from the scene where the bookstore owner explains the nature of magic and spells to the protagonist Sarah “True magic is neither black or nor white – it is both because nature is both. Loving and cruel all at the same time … the only good or bad is in the heart of the witch. Life keeps a balance on its own.”
Connect that to the yin-yang symbol and Taoist philosophy and you know why I named this website and podcast what it is.
So if reversed cards don’t represent a thing and it’s opposite or some sort of positive vs negative duality, what do reversed cards tell us?
Sometimes, nothing.
I read reversed cards as meaning that there is something up with how the card’s meaning is being used or manifested in life. There is something blocked or turbulent or glitchy with the energy flow that the card and its position within a layout represents.
Author Scott Cunningham is known for saying “The feeling is the power” If you are feeling strong today great! Have at it!
If not, that’s fine. No one has the capacity to be perfect every moment, and we certainly don’t feel that way every moment.
The Strength card always has an element of trusting yourself. If you are feeling strong, then you have to trust it to use it. If you are not feeling strong, then you still have to trust yourself. It is a matter of trust that your inner strength is still there, still fully functioning.
Do the thing. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to enjoy it. You don’t have to act happy about it when you aren’t. You can, however still do what needs done because your strength is more than it feels.
Thank you for reading and listening!
The blog, podcast, and youtube channel are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraftTarot ko-fi page to become a member of the TaoCraft Tarot Table and be a patron of these Tarot arts. Of course, your likes, subs, shares, follows and reading orders through the blog website are always, always appreciated.
Thanks again and I’ll see you at the next sip!
Yesterday, the Seven of Cups talked about the power of choices. No secret, one of my favorite TV shows. Current showrunner and writer Chris Chibnall wrote in the “Cold Earth” episode that “The future pivots around you, here, now. So do good” That is what the TaoCraft style of Tarot is all about. Showing you the choices around which your future pivots. It shows the choices that have brought you where you are, and can take you where you want to go.
Today, the King of Wands shows the power and control you have over those magic-seeming choices.
Not every THING, not every condition, and certainly not every person around you is under your control. If you are very lucky, you might have some influence. On the other hand, you are totally, completely in control of your inner world. You are the one to decide the interaction between your inner passions, your inner desires and the circumstances of the outer world. You choose whether to view the things around you as hindrances to your dreams, or as resources to help you achieve them.
mini rant about mercury retrograde
All the blame-y victim-y whine-y energy and posts about friggen’ Mercury damn retrograde on social media ( looking at you Instagram) has officially gotten on my last nerve.
Blaming poor choices or random gliches on “Mercury retrograde” is like saying you stubbed your toe because it is raining in Poughkeepsie. Magick, energy, intuition, creativity, life force, the random crap of living – it is all bigger than one zippy little planet in one out of the way solar system in a really really big universe. You are part of the big stuff. You are rightfullly as much a part of the Cosmos as is Mercury. Now, knock it off about the damn retrograde, OWN your life and go be amazing.
“What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view” – Obi Wan Kenobi
Obi Wan nailed it. Sorry Bill.
Names, labels, adjectives, the power of words; all of those things have niggled at me off and on over the years. The niggling about names hasn’t stopped since we talked about it the other day in the “What is in a Name” post. That was a first step away from Shakespeare’s literalness about flowers. Let’s take it one step more.
Shakespeare was right, of course, in the most literal sense. You could name that particular fragrant flower a “rose” or a “gagglystank” or anything else, and the literal flower would still have the same chemicals causing the same fragrance, the same petals, the same stems, the same thorns and all the same physical attributes.
But, like business and website names, any name has more to it than just literal, physical descriptions. Names, like all of language, is about communication. If I say “rose” and you speak English, you know exactly what I mean. Not just a flower, but a particular type of flower with a particular set of physical attributes. You can probably imagine the scent, the petals, the stems, everything about them. If I say “gagglystank” to you, chances are you will have no idea what it means much less have a physical description come to mind. Gagglystank is a word that tells you a little about my feeling about the scent of roses, but is definitely not the NAME of anything. There is power in a name. Communication happens when things have a name. Communication conquers time and space. That is why “branding”….naming….matters. It is outward communication. A name is immediate, instant communication of what a thing is. TaoCraft Tarot is hint about what I do and my way of doing it.
Shakespeare’s roses (in addition to being a great idea for a band name) is about the literal, unchanging being of objects no matter what words are projected onto them. Names are more than the literal objects. Names are also about every intangible thing the tangible object symbolizes. Outward communication is one step away from the actual things. One more step takes us inward. Consider the psychology and emotional response to a rose.
If we called roses gagglystanks instead, would they really smell as sweet? What emotions and connotations would a different name elicit? I’m not fond of rose scent or anything too cloying or floral. Gagglystank is a perfectly good word to tell you how I feel about the way those specific flowers smell. But it can’t be the name of the thing, because it doesn’t communicate to you. It isn’t a meaning our language has agreed to use. It doesn’t capture the visual beauty. It doesn’t capture the emotional response to the flower generated by generations of love-symbolism our culture has connected to that flower. When we see or hear the name “rose” all at once we understand the literal thing, the things the symbolizes, and likely experience a positive emotional feeling to go along with it all.
First you have a thing. Then you have a name-word for the thing. Then you have all the abstract things that go with the literal thing, all wound up in an emotional response to the whole word-name-symbolism package. Names means a lot.
This second-step away from Shakespeare’s roses is the place where Tarot cards get their power. The cards have powerful images. The cards use powerful words. They prompt us to take that next step beyond literal things and outward communication in order to get right to the realm of symbolism, emotional connotations and, most importantly, inner response. The Tower comes to mind. Set aside the lighting and other images, lets talk about just the Tower alone for a minute. First you have a literal picture of a literal tall thing. You name it Tower, and without the picture, a Tarot reader can convey instant understanding of both the thing and the image. If I say “tower” then you know I’m talking about a big tall skinny outdoor object or part of a building. Then you bring in all the connotations of a tower: tallness, a higher perspective, potential isolation. The inner FEELING of the reader guides the seeker to the right connotation and symbolism, even when reader and seeker are the same person. The process of inward symbolic communication…the second step away from Shakespeare’s roses…is where a Tarot reading really happens. This kind of word and name driven inward communication is the same no matter if you are reading for yourself or someone else, nearby or at a distance.
The thing, the name of the thing, along with the symbolism, connotations, and emotions that the name carries are all part of intuitive communication. Names speak both outwardly and inwardly.
There is power attached to a name. That power can attach to any name for any thing in any language, but not every name carries that level of potency. Roses by other names may not smell as sweet except in the literal sense. Roses by their true name have a complex fragrance…from a certain point of view.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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