Tag: psychic
The Power Grows
The more digital becomes the norm, the more power handwriting gains as it slips into the realm of the quaint, the old-fashioned, and the arcane.
I’ve seen it called both a day and a month of commemoration, but April has been dubbed “National Letter Writing Month” here in the US. It isn’t about pretty callegraphy, it is about heart to heart communication in written form.
In honor of the month, my favorite format (writing) and my Tarot specialty (distance, e-mail, mail) “InkMagick Sigil Tarot Readings” are $1 off the regular price until April 30, 2019. Order yours on the home page.
Each reading, both paper and digital, gives a sigil element, a symbol or doodle given by intuition. You are welcome to use it in your own sigil crafting. In the me pictured above, the pinaform (feather) shape symbolizes a pen or writing. the line paper, plus our connection, the circles hint at electrons, distance communication.
If you are interested in sigils, writing, and magick (yes, I use the k, it just looks cooler and I’m no Penn and Teller, you know?) I suggest reading Sigil Witchery by Laura Tempest Zakroff and Write Your Own Magic by Richard Webster.
TaoCraft Tarot is on YouTube! Please visit, like and subscribe: https://youtu.be/nfV6eP_G4RM
How To Find Your Soulmate
This is an updated, combined version of my two-part post from 2009. Stay tuned for a more soulmate themed posts from the Tarotbytes archives.
The question of “how do I find my soulmate” (or some version of that) comes up in Tarot readings a LOT. I asked the question a LOT when I was younger and first started going to get psychic readings. Little did I know then that I would wind up doing this kind of work. After seeing the soulmate question from both sides, I have a few ideas that to offer.
First, don’t worry about time. Love is one of those cosmic truths beyond time. Love has no need to respond to our time schedules or expectations because it exists beyond time. It is everywhere, always. The time and place for it to take a specific form is not something we control, cause or find. “It happens in its own time” and “you can’t hurry love” are both very true. So don’t worry about WHEN. Once you take that “when” pressure off of yourself, and off of your unknown soulmate, then that creates more energetic space for the relationship to step into.
If the loneliness gets to be too much, and sometimes it does, remember that Love exists. It is an inseparable part of the cosmos. So are you. Look up. You and your soulmate exist under the same sky. Love touches you even in the times when you least feel it.
Second, why not let your soulmate find you? The outward flowing, struggling quality of “finding” a soulmate is often counter-productive. If it is meant to be, it will happen naturally. Fighting the current, not ‘going with the flow’ only makes things harder. Think about a crowded amusement park. If you are constantly on the move, in among the crowd, what are the chances you will find that one person? What are the chances they can find you? Now, imagine standing on a bench and waving hello. What are the chances they will see you in the crowd now? If you are happy, relaxed, loving, compassionate, and being your genuine self, then you are more likely to attract your perfect mate to you.
Third, use the spiritual law of similars. “Birds of a feather flock together” is a thing. Soulmate energy seems to vibrate along the law of similars – like attracts like. Or as Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If you are going to attract people who are like you, what kind of soulmate do you want to draw into your life? One obsessed with being lonely, impatient, constantly seeking? Or do want a soulmate who is happy, and enjoying life just as it is right now? You do you…and enjoy every minute of it, and that sends a signal to the perfect match FOR you. That happiness is lighthouse, signaling to your soulmate. Nothing calls out to your perfect soulmate like being your genuine, happy self. Remember that other spiritual law: Confidence is sexy. Learning to feel comfortable in your own skin is an essential step.
Fourth, do things that you love to do. Going to bars or whatever with the sole purpose of “finding a soulmate” seldom works. Do something you love and that love, that light, will shine out to the people who love you for that thing you do. They say common interests are a good foundation for building a relationship. If you love, love, LOVE going to smoky bars and hanging out with drunk people, by all means that is the way to find a soulmate. If not, skip that idea and do whatever it is that you really do love. Do things that you really care about and things that feel like they feed your soul. You might find your perfect someone at that same spiritual buffet.
Feeling lonely, feeling like someone or something is missing from your life is difficult. Soulmates are deeply important, which is why they capture so much of our thoughts and emotional energy. There are no glib or easy answers to finding love and acceptance. It comes in many forms. Love saturates the universe. Perhaps the key to finding out soulmate is finding love where ever it exists and, most of all, living the Love that exists within yourself.
Want more personalized guidance? Order Distance Tarot HERE
Ghost of Zombie Cat
First published 17 May 2015
“There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies” – William Shakespeare
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost” – Ghostbusters
In the first Zombie Cat post we talked a little bit about the intersection of Tarot and science. Now lets shift gears yet again and add in the spiritual, fringe, and frankly, “woo-woo” aspect of things. Tarot intersects all of those, too.
When I’m not looking at the world as a giant Taoist Taijitu (yin/yang symbol) I tend to see a lot of things in terms of a Venn diagram. That’s why I chose a triquetra as the main symbol in my old Modern Oracle logo. This “trinity knot” is essentially an excerpt of a three circle Venn diagram which in turn symbolizes much in my work…mind/body/spirit (for holistic health) or mother/maiden/crone (for the stages of life) or sea/sky/land (our connection with Nature) and many more such groups of three. I see Tarot as overlapping with self, science and spirituality, again giving us that lovely triquetra shape.
So, back to Tarot and spirituality. Any good thesis defines its terms. In this case we have to define spirituality. I’ve noticed a tendency for people to use spirituality and religion almost interchangeably. They aren’t. As I see it, they are totally different, damn near opposite things. I define spirituality as internal and individual. Spirituality is how we as individuals engage with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and our existence within it. Religion, on the other hand, is external, codified, ritualized, other, outside of our individual self. Religion is how a collective of people over time has engaged with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and pronounced them to be. We express our spirituality in out external lives. Spirituality goes from the inside out. Religion structures our external lives as a way to instruct the internal. Religion is outside in. Tarot is intuition – it is inside to inside. It has everything to do with spirituality, nothing to do with religion.
Spirituality is unlimited. It is in this vast inner world where Tarot applies and finds its usefulness. Yes, the cards are external. But they don’t instruct our inner world from the outside in as a religious practice might. They are a mirror to reflect out inner world back to us and lens to help us understand what we see there. They reflect and shine light in the dark corners, allowing that inner world of spirituality to illuminate and expand, grow and thrive.
The cards are nothing more than just pieces of paper. It is centuries of projected wisdom and symbolism written on the cards combined with the intuition and insight of the Tarot reader’s living modern mind that leads the way to enlightenment…not the pieces of paper alone. The cards are the Venn diagram intersection of mind and matter that lets us catch glimpses of the possibilities and probabilities afforded to us by the physical/quantum universe of which we are an intimate and inseparable part.
Tarot cards are our portal into the trinity of humanity, science and spirituality. They are a magnet that draws wisdom, guidance, insight and empowerment out of a melange of known, unknown, explicable, inexplicable, and the heart that seeks to know more.
There is more in heaven and earth than we have yet to dream and discover. There is more inside ourselves as well. There is more than just a dead or living cat in Schrodinger’s box. Woo-woo as they may seem, disappearing cats and zombie cats are part of the bigger multiverse of the human heart, mind, imagination and spirit.
Zombie Cat is in the house! Yes-or-No Tarot is now available to order on the home page. These 3 card Tarot readings answer any ONE yes-or-no question. Fun, lighthearted and tongue in what’s left of his cheek, Zombie Cat’s readings are 100% guaranteed to have words in them and a 50% chance of being dead wrong. Order HERE.
Zombie Cat
First published 27 April 2015
“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
– Doctor Who in the “Blink” episode written by Steven Moffat.
There are two words that make me cringe a little when I read (or hear) them in a Tarot question: “Will” and “When”.
Predictions and time are knotty subjects in this work.
Predictions are actually a scientific thing. A scientific prediction is, in essence, expert opinion about what should happen based on existing data and past results. For example, we can predict where in the sky Mars will be a year from now based on laws of gravity, planetary motion, existing observations and so on. As I understand it, that is the kind of “prediction” that a law of physics or scientific principle has to be able to make in order for the principle to be considered valid within the scientific method.
Science spends so much time and energy bashing and demeaning “psychic predictions” when they are, in essence, the same as the scientific kind of predictions. The psychic reader is an objective observer, knows human nature, and can see trends that the person getting the reading may not see. A Tarot reader can predict where things are going in a relationship just like a scientist can predict where Mars is headed over the next year. The only real difference is psychic predictions are based on non-linear logic and de facto psychology instead of linear logic and hard data.
And that is looking at it from a very superficial, everyday experience point of view. This is Isaac Newton kind of stuff. It’s like predicting that when an apple detaches from the tree, it will fall down. What if we go a just a little bit quantum about it?
Think Schrodinger’s Cat.
In theory, once the experiment is set up and started, the cat could come out of it alive or not. But why not both if you are into zombies? Or neither one if the cat suddenly ceased to exist? Disappearing / Zombie Cat could happen…it’s just extreme magnitudes of unlikely as I understand the BBC Horizon Series’ program “Parallel Universes” (hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku, based on his book “Parallel Worlds”)
When the moment of discovery is still in the future, the possibility and attendant probability exists for all outcomes. In the mysterious and undetermined future, all four conditions exist, even our unlikely disappearing / undead pet. Can you predict which way THAT is headed using nothing but your brain and handful of Tarot cards? If you “predict” the more likely dead vs alive construct, is that psychic or science? If you predict Zombie Cat, is that quackery or was the intuitive vision simply dialed into a different part of a far flung multiverse?
Zombie Cat may well exist out there. We don’t know because multiverses, as the video says, is unproven. No-cat and Zombie Cat might be out there, but they just don’t make the jump from possible to probable to IS, at least not in this world. All potentials exists until “the wave collapses” and the moment becomes NOW instead of future, and then slips instantly into the past. Now and Past are fully collapsed probability waves. They exist – ska-doosh! – done deal, nothing to predict. The future on the other hand, that’s a different animal still.
Now, just to make things really interesting, let’s introduce Zombie Cat to Alice the Vampire.
In the movie Twilight, the psychic vampire Alice could see the future insofar as people have decided what they want to do. If someone changes their mind or changes their action, then her vision changes. She can predict but with uncertainty. Her predictions are predicated on the course people are on, not any one fixed outcome. Alice the vampire’s visions and Zombie Cat’s existence are a matter of probability, not “accurate prediction.” And so it is with Tarot and psychic readings.
Let’s say our cat has human-like intelligence and has a choice rather than being a victim of circumstance as in the classic thought experiment. Using the Einstein gunpowder version of things, what if there was some choice the cat could make or some action it could take that would keep the gunpowder from exploding? What if it could disconnect the fuse? Now how do you make predictions under that set of conditions?
Imagine your psychic vision was of a dead cat? (a 50% probable outcome in the original experiment.) What if the cat heard you make that “psychic prediction” and blew out the fuse when it otherwise wouldn’t have? Was the prediction wrong?
Will you get that job? I dunno. Did you apply for it? Update your resume? Schedule an interview? Check the classifieds for other options? (What has the cat done to keep the powder from exploding) Has the person doing the hiring made any decisions or taken any actions? (collapsed the probability wave)
A reading can’t predict a specific outcome, but it can give you advice and it can help you make decisions that nudge the probabilities of getting the job in your favor such as be flexible (4 of swords), emphasize your skills and experience (The Emperor) or show you’d be a hard working team player (3 of coins). A good advice reading is like the psychic yelling at the cat in the thought experiment bunker to blow out the fuse to improve the chances that it won’t blow up.
When will you get married? I dunno. The future is just as wibbly-wobbly as the Doctor told us. But Tarot can give you ideas about how to bring love and happiness of all sorts of things into your life. Intuition can help you make the best possible choices along the way, not predict what lies at the end of the road.
If you do nothing, take no advice, make no choices, then it is all just a coin toss. You might get anything from an explosion right up to a Zombie Cat. But who knows? Meeting a friendly Tarot reading Zombie Cat might be a lot of fun.
Next time: The Ghost of Zombie Cat
Videos by Minute Physics, via youtube.com creative commons permissions Please watch! I highly recommend them!
Inspired by “Test Tubes and Tarot Decks” episode of Menage A Tarot Podcast April 2015
Alice Got It Right, Twilight Tells the Future
First Published 17 January 2010
I’m scheduled to work at a couple of Twilight themed events (2019 me: they were a lot of fun! Grateful!) so I’m reading the books and just watched the movie to see what all the buzz is about.
As an aspiring writer of sorts, I’m impressed with Stephanie Myers skill. I full on expected to hate the books. I thought it was going to be some superficial. bubble-gum popping teen angst romance. In some respects, it is. But I was sincerely impressed with her skill at using the first person. It creates enormous empathy with Bella, you experience everything intensely through her eyes. And the sudden shift to Jacob’s point of view has all the more impact because of it. Well done!!
Of course, being in the Tarot business, Alice is one of my favorite characters. Alice is a vampire with special vampire super psychic future seeing powers. She has it exactly right. Her visions change in response to choice and decision. What she sees now, might become totally wrong if someone changes their mind or actions later. Her visions shift and change as people’s actions and choices shift and change. She sees along the path of greatest probability, not some sort of fated certainty.
That is exactly how it works in my experience. Asking Alice to see something isn’t a lock. Asking a psychic or tarot reader is even less of a certainty. The web of choice, decision, intention and change is even more complex, wavering and unstable than in the fictional world of Twilight.
So hats off to Stephanie Myers for putting that idea into the mainstream. It’s going to make my life easier explaining how Tarot really works to a client who has seen the movie. It is true that fiction can sometimes tell more truth than reality. I can talk until blue in the face about how choice impacts future, how you can create your own future through the choices you make, but people will absorb the idea in an instant from the movie. The visual experience of the movie makes the concept real, and understandable.
Plus, it is just a well crafted, entertaining story start to finish. And it predicts the future – the right way.
100% Accurate Predictions and a Big Cube of Jello
First Published 8 October 2015
Readings help you to own your choices so that fate and the future won’t own you.
ALL predictions are 100% accurate. ZERO predictions are 100% accurate. Both. At the same time. If you are a Doctor Who fan, you might say making predictions is wibbly wobbley timey wimey kind of stuff.
Time is dimension all its own. Just like space is one big thing, time is all one big thing. All of time exists all at once…right now, the part you will experience in the future, the parts you have already experienced in the past, and parts you will never experience at all. A “prediction” is an intuitive impression…a thought…a non-psychical glimpse of that non-physical thing we call time.
If the “psychic” impression connects to a point in time/space that you get to experience, the prediction proves accurate. If it comes from a point in time/space that you don’t experience first hand then the “prediction” seems all wrong – even though it is perfectly accurate for somewhere and some-when completely different from us. The multi-verse is a big place, bigger than time itself. Anything is possible out there somewhere. Just maybe not here, not in our little region of Time/Space
To borrow an image from “Star Trek”…. any given prediction might be 100% wrong for you – but 100% accurate for your goatee wearing evil twin from an alternate universe. There is no way to tell the impressions apart or to direct intuition to specifically YOUR timeline…because any little itsy witsy teeny tiny choice you make can change the course of your timeline drastically enough to point you away from itty bitty speck of tim/space that was predicted. Time/space is too deeply connected to pull out that kind of granular detail. One bit of jello is much like another.
Imagine time as a giant cube of gelatin. Imagine your life is a thread wiggling its way through the middle of the cube, moving and shifting an tiny bit with the choices that you and all who affect you make. Imagine you are a little spark of glitter moving along that thread. Time is always passing for you. Intuition and predictions can come from any part of the whole cube. The prediction comes from X location within the cube, but suddenly the thread wiggles over to Y location. The prediction wasn’t necessarily wrong at the time it was made. Just wrong for the direction you are moving a little bit after the prediction was made. Things changed just enough to put the “prediction” outside of your range of experience.
You control your thread’s wiggle…not the jello. That is what Tarot, “psychics” and spiritual advice is really all about. It isn’t about telling you exactly what is ahead on your ‘thread’ it is about helping you nudge and wiggle the thread in the direction you want it to go.
Order distance Tarot readings HERE
Contact me to schedule in – person or party Tarot in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh PA
Q&A: Are Tarot Cards Demonic?
First Published 5-27-15 Updated 3-24-19
Q: Are Tarot cards demonic?
A: No.
Hell and demons are religious ideas, so religious people might give you a different answer. As I see it, religion and spirituality are totally different things (see Ghost of Zombie Cat post) . I believe that Tarot is a combination of science and spirituality with religion having no part in the process. No religion, no demons.
The scientific part has to do with resonance and vibration. Think of guitar strings. Pluck one string and it vibrates at a certain frequency and makes a certain note. Twang a different size string and you get a different note. If two separate strings are tuned to the same note, then you can play one string and the other vibrates too, making a similar sound along with the first one (resonance). Tarot cards are the guitar pick, not the note. The guitar string you choose and play sets the tone for Tarot experience you have and any resonant energies that come along with it. If you vibrate on the demon note, you have a bigger chance of resonating a “demonic” experience. If you vibrate at the “guidance” note then that’s what you’ll get. The old adage of “you get out of it what you put into it” has a sort of literal truth here. Expect hellfire, and you might get it. Expect happy, and you might get that too.
To put it into spiritual terms, all you have to do for a demon-free reading is fill yourself with love and light, or ask for protection from some higher energy / protective power. I love J.K. Rowling’s image of a “patronus” in this context. Think about it…the shape of your inner light protects you. What shape would you want your inner light to take? A trembling mouse or a roaring tiger? Who would you want between you an the minions of evil? A clergyman or Ironman?
Here is a powerful image from Joy Star’s newsletter (used with permission.) Think of a house on a dark night. Imagine the house filled with cheery lights and a cozy fire in the fireplace. If you open the front door what happens? Does the outer dark come rushing in and extinguish the light, or does the light pour out of the open door and illuminate the dark? This isn’t saying that the dark doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that houses can’t lose power or that disasters don’t happen to people who “think positive” all the time. This is the real world. Of course bad stuff happens. But good stuff happen too. If you fill yourself with light before opening the door then you can see what is hidden without the darkness coming in. Fear and superstition turns your lights out. When you are afraid or angry, then dark meets dark at the door.
The spirit world isn’t all sunshine and roses. Natural forces that are out of our league and there are negative energies from ill-intentioned people. You can protect yourself on spiritual level the same as you protect yourself on a physical level by putting on a raincoat during a storm or staying out of dangerous places alone at night. The most important protection is simple intention. Intent is a very potent thing. Before you do any magick or spiritual or energy work, very clearly set your intent to only act in safety for and with the highest and best good. Plus don’t forget you are not the only person on Earth who resonates with energy and divination. Read, arm yourself with knowledge. Get advice, learn from other people’s experience in order to explore in safety. An excellent start is reading Psychic Protection by Ted Andrews.
You have probably heard of the ‘spiritual law’ that “Like attracts like.” If you are hopeful, you may attract something inspirational. If you are afraid, you may attract something frightening.
By the same token, if you are genuinely afraid of the cards, then don’t deny or minimize that. It is what it is. If your religious beliefs are in conflict with Tarot readings, then simply find your guidance another way. From my side of things, it is incredibly difficult to do a good reading for someone who is so conflicted about Tarot that they can barely hear what the session has to say anyway. Tarot is a great tool for learning, but it isn’t for everyone. If you are seriously worried that Tarot cards are demonic, “occult” or that you’ll burn in hell for having a reading…then you need to find the right kind of guidance for you. Why put that kind of stress on yourself? For Tarot to be helpful, you have to let go of something. Either let go of the religious notions of demons and damnation, or let go of Tarot as a way for guidance. Either is fine. They just don’t mix, like oil and water.
Tarot cards aren’t demonic. It’s WAY worse than that. Tarot cards are reflective. Tarot cards aren’t evil, they are a mirror showing you life’s harsh realities. Choose fear, see fear. Choose love, see love. Choose courage and compassion and see something beautiful.
My reading style is calm, reasonable, no-drama and never occult or scary. I’ve done more first-time readings than I can count. If you would like a safe, no judgement, religion-free way to try a Tarot reading, a five-card email reading is a good choice. Very private, very convenient, very affordable. Order HERE
National Letter Writing Month
I suck at writing letters.
So OF COURSE I’m celebrating National Letter Writing Month.
If I’m negligent about writing personal letters, it’s because it hard to think of something interesting to say besides SSDD written in big crayon. So let’s give ourselves something to talk about – TAROT!
Handwriting has been niggling at me lately, hand in hand with learning about Sigils. I’ve known and used the power of the written word for myself for, well, decades. Journaling, affirmation writing, setting energy, a written word form of sigil work. It’s all been a very positive experience. I can’t promise it will work as well for everyone, but I’m still going to put some of that positive mojo into my Tarot work as a whole.
“InkMagick Sigil Tarot” is that Tarot-meets-writing combination. Each reading is hand written (as legibly as I can muster, calligrapher I’m not) and includes your uniquely drawn card, the interpretation, a “sigil” or symbol or doodle or something non-verbal given by spirit or intuition, then wraps up with a positive affirmation statement based on the reading.
I can write it in my “Rocketbook” which converts the handwritten page into a PDF document, so I can email it to you.
OR I can send it on honest to goodness old fashioned ink on paper. I charge a little more for those to cover the cost of paper, postage, and the side trip to the post office.
Getting letters is as much fun as sending them. More, actually. So I’m more than happy to e-mail from clients and readers. Here is a contact form to make it easy for you. Say something! Please!
Have a good weekend – R.
Parallax
Originally published 5-27-2010
“Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 1, Camera 2” ~ Wayne’s World 2
Ever play with that trick of eyesight? Close one eye, and hold up a pencil so it lines up with an object in the distance. Then switch eyes and the pencil seems to jump to one side. Things don’t line up the same way.
In astronomy, this is called parallax. In anatomy, this phenomenon where the brain combines two slightly different views from two slightly different viewpoint gives us depth perception…it allows us to see distance. Two eyes lets us live in three dimensions. It helps us to not walk into objects and learn our environment the literal hard way.
A similar idea is true in Tarot and psychic work. Getting a reading isn’t predicting the future…it is getting a second look, a separate viewpoint to combine with our own that lets us see with greater clarity and understanding. It helps us be a bit more perceptive, and not have to learn every lesson the hard way.
Two third-eyes are better than one, in other words.
Even those of us who do readings professionally will sometimes GET one to improve our understanding and fill in any blind spots.
I like to think that when psychics read for themselves or consult a fellow psychic, it works like binocular vision. Two readings from two people gives two views that can be fused together into a higher quality, more useful vision.
Another example is the VLA, “very large array” of radio telescopes. It is made of 27 or so radio antennae all linked together to work together like one big dish, one configuration is over 20 miles across. Working together, the telescopes have capabilities magnetudes more than any individual telescope. If we combine our logic, know-how, and life experience to work together with oracle tools (tarot, runes, palm lines, what-have-you) and other intuitives, we can increase our understanding and spiritual growth by magnitudes.
If one eye is closed, then depth perception doesn’t work. If one telescope is down, the array doesn’t work as well. We each bring our part to a reading. The sitter (learner, seeker, client) has a part to play too. When we do a Tarot reading, we work together. I translate spirit, but it is up to you to understand and apply the message. We work together like the telescopes in the VLA or two eyes together to see farther. Working together, we see with more clarity. Together we are clairvoyant.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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