Sage Sips is tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee
Pause the video. Think of a question, topic or simply the week ahead of you. Choose the card that feels right or that you feel most drawn to. Even if you see the card first – even if you see the card AND read the interpretations before choosing your card, the choice is still valid. You can do all of that and still choose both. Or neither.
Your inner wisdom, your own good intuition still leads the choice. The whole point is that there IS a choice – and it is all yours. You’ll know the right guidance for you when you see it.
THE FOOL: Perspective is everything. A fresh look is a fresh start. Know all the angles before committing to an action or an opinion.
QUEEN OF WANDS: You are the ruler of your inner kingdom. Queen’s lead through example and nurturing. Keep yourself strong in order to be of greatest help to others.
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Welcome to 2024 and the first Card Of The Week of the new year.
Since the New Year reading, I’ve gotten some nice feedback about the ‘you choose’ format we used.
With all of the fast pace question-in-the-comments live readings that are available now, it seems the slower, more contemplative, interactive readings aren’t as common as they were a couple of years ago. These kind of pick your card / slow reveal readings used to be all over the place.
I’m bringing them back.
It feels a little more intensely personal than quick comment/live readings or purely collective energy readings. Let me know what you think. If you like it, we can keep it. If no one says anything, I’ll decide in a few weeks which format to use most of the time. It’ll either be a you-choose card for the week like this or back to random collective energy card for the day posts.
Watch the video, pick your card. In the future, I expect that you’ll be able to scroll back down here and read a longer, more eloquent, dammit I’m a writer not a YouTuber interpretation for the card. Today, it was all I could do to get back into filming at all. Even in low-tech, lofi, laid back mode. I don’t have anything to add to the video this time.
But seriously – comment or email or use the Ask Me Anything page to let me know what you think of the you-choose format.
You choose and I won’t have to.
Next up on the squirrel-rave playlist* Learn With Me: Lenormand returns, hopefully on Wednesday
Thanks so much! See you at the next sip!
*Squirrel Rave Playlist is my nickname for the no-schedule schedule and not-plan plan for 2024.
*Inspired by the internet meme “I don’t have ducks, I don’t have rows – I have squirrels and they are hosting a pagan rave.”
*The general not-plan for the blog is a COTW in some format or another on Mondays and Learn With Me posts on Wednesdays, weekly digest newsletter on Substack on the weekend, and everything else being just pure random intuitive inspriation.
So much is up to you – it’s your choice what you do with what you are handed. Emotions bubble up, but you choose what you do about them.
Sorry about the shreddy sounding voice and disorganized presentation (there are reasons why I’m a writer type Tarot reader and not a social media influencer) but watch the video, pick a path.
This shows some of my choices for 2024.The YouTube channel is all companion videos showing the real world card draw for the day. The video has short commentary in the description, but the full reading is here in the blog. I don’t like talking on video, so there you are. I hope you’ll watch and read to get the best of both worlds.
Looking at all the rows together we see lots of major arcana and court cards. I think that is hinting at a big energy year. Lots of change, a real roller coaster ride. Plant good seeds, set a good foundation now so our roller coaster ride ends up in a good place.
Top Row – Quartz
Clear quartz is the universal amplifier. It turns up the volume on your connection to universal energies and the effects of other stones and crystals. This may be your year to be the helper. Speak your truth and let it be heard.
Fading Energy: 10 of Swords. I’m guessing that 2023 was a heckuva year for you. This card isn’t hinting that anything dire is going to happen. It’s hinting that it already has. HEAL. Let yourself be down, make a full assessment of everything that has happened so you can stand up again. I always connect this card to the proverb “fall down seven times but get up eight.”
Current Energy: Queen of Swords. This is a card of accepting your power. Give yourself a little dose of confidence. It isn’t arrogant to do the things you are good at doing. If you don’t want to think of yourself as being good at something, then do the things you LOVE to do. Often they are the same thing.
Growing Energy: Strength. This card is just what it seems. Heal from what has happened, get up again, claim your strengths. Confidence and strength can grow as time goes on.
Middle Row – Orange Calcite
Calcite comes in a variety of colors, but the orange calcite here is especially associated with the second chakra, below the navel. Orange is the opposite of blue on the color wheel, so orange calcite can poetically speaking “chase away the blues.” Of all of orange calcite’s properties cleansing and uplifting step forward here.
Fading energy: Judgement. This also gives me the feeling that you center row folks had a heckuva year, but more on the mental and emotional level than in the physical / career realm. Let go of other people’s judgement of you and give yourself a second chance whether anyone else does or not. Humans are a diverse lot. There is someone, somewhere who accepts you just exactly as you are, no judgments or second chances required.
Current energy: Hermit. Nothing is better for letting go of old hurts than a little alone time. Give yourself the space to shut out all the judge-y voices. Set some boundaries, find your one guiding light. When you come out of your hermit cave, a fresh start will be right there waiting for you. Any day can be the first day of a new year.
Growing energy: Queen of Wands. This is a card of self care too, but it has an element of claiming your own time, skills, strengths and powers. The energy feel of this card is very much like the queen of swords and it feels like the queen of wands is standing in as surrogate simply because the queen of swords can’t be in two places at the same time. Putting it in those words, I get a sense that the year may be growing in activity. It could get busy. Whether that heaping plate of things to do is a good thing or a stressful thing is up to you.
Foundation Row – Red Carnelian
Red carnelian is a stone of courage, endurance and leadership. You never know what you have inside until it is put to the test. One way to discover your comfort zone is to step outside of it. But don’t worry, if you can’t step back in to the old zone, it will grow out to meet you. You got this.
Fading energy: The High Priestess. This is a card of mystique and mystery. When mystery fades it often leaves certainty in its wake. This card reminds me of a quote by scientist Richard Feynman “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” Know with confidence, but question everything with equal energy.
Current energy: Five of Swords. Sword cards often denote action. Now that I think about it, the word aftermath is stepping forward here. The past three years have been pretty unhinged on the macro scale, if not on your individual one too. This card is validating what you feel, but also challenging you to rise to the circumstances. “Yeah, that sucked, but now what are you going to DO about it?” is the vibe.
Growing energy: The Empress. Get back to nature, baby. This is a big reminder to touch some grass this year, literally and figuratively. Somewhere I read about a study where people’s blood pressure came down a little bit whenever they looked at pictures of nature. That isn’t to say pictures of nature cure high blood pressure, but that objective, measurable change showed that we associate nature with relaxation and even that tiny bit of contact was enough to elicit a tiny bit of measurable, physiologic stress reduction.
Whether it is a new computer wallpaper, a walk in the park, a day at the beach or a week long camping trip…anything you can do to connect with nature is nothing but good this year. For goodness’ sake get outside and breathe some fresh air, will you?
And everybody wash your hands, wear a mask when you need to, get enough sleep and eat an occasional vegetable while you are at it.
I wish everyone a safe, happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
See you at the next sip!
Sage Sips is Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Let’s take a closer look at another card from my new Lenormand Tarot deck.
The more I work with this deck, the more it feels like a real-talk oracle card, really a thing of its own. Not a toxic positive overly optimistic oracle deck that sees the world through rose colored glasses, certainly, but not the depth and complexity that the 78 RWS or the 130+ card Alleyman’s Tarot. A bigger deck with smaller layouts seems to be the sweet spot for my intuition.
See, we learned something right there.
Finding – and frequently using – your intuitive comfort zone is not only OK but it is a good idea to better readings for yourself in the end. BUT at the same time learning, growing, and expanding that comfort zone is equally important. How else are you going to know what your optimum intuition conditions ARE?
That little bit of meta-analysis aside, let’s look at today’s card, the Snake.
All of the animal related ideas from the Bear last week still apply, just swap out the bear characteristics for snake characteristics.
Which I may not be super objective about.
I was born in the year of the wood snake – the green snake. After I learned about Taoism, feng shui, I ching and the like, I’ve always resonated with my chinese astrology symbol just as much if not more than my western Pisces sun sign. Although I don’t know anything about sidereal vs tropical astrology, all I know is that I’m Pisces in both, which in itself is supposed to mean something in itself, I think. I’ll leave that to the astrology adepts of you to figure out. But back to Snake.
The Christopher Butler guidebook to this Healing Light Lenormand deck reads the Snake as someone deceptive with malicious intent (Hey!)
Like owls, snakes are feared in some cultures, revered in others. Makes sense, because in the real world the old nope rope may be either harmless or lethal and you have to know something about them to be able to tell which is which. That’s not the snake being deceptive. It’s up to you to know “Red touches black, no worries for Jack. Red touches yellow, dangerous fellow.” and so on.
Knowledge arms you against deception, both literally and figuratively. But that’s another story.
Chinese astrology, the restaurant place mat edition, reflects the real world duality. Snake year people can be stubborn, opinionated, intimidating with a heaping helping of hubris to go with it. But at the same time they are viewed as intelligent, wise, creative and intuitive.
Or, as the Sirius Black character says in one of the Harry Potter books “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
Part of enlarging our comfort zone, part of learning new things is associating them with things we know well. Just like with the oracle dice from the last “Learn With Me” series I associate this with a few RWS Tarot cards, the Devil and the Three of Swords. Both acknowledge the malevolent side of human nature, cautions us to be on guard as well as asking us to be honest with ourselves about our deepest motives. Are we being deceptive, or are we being deceived.
As for the playing card inset, the queen of clubs, in my system of reading playing cards (I intend to write about that in an upcoming book) the Queen of Clubs is analogous to the Queen of Wands with a message of nurturing and self-care. Watching your back and taking care for your safety is, indeed, self-care.is
*Po-tay-toes!* Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew… Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (movie 2001)
Some days don’t feel magical. Some days you just have to peel the damn potatoes.
But if you can do that, when you get through the ordinary, there is magic at the end. Or at least a meal full of filling, satisfying, starchy comfort.
Today is a little like potatoes for me. It is utterly, delightfully, magically ordinary. It is a day off from the day job – but no pressing errands, no frenzy of summer recreation. Just simple household things to do.
This is where the magic lives.
We talk about attracting and manifesting and living our dreams. But where will the dream live? Where are we attracting TO? Manifested dreams live in our ordinary world, regardless of whether you attracted them there – or if they were there all along just waiting to be seen. Either way, the path to magick is lined with ordinary days.
You may not think it takes courage to live an ordinary day. For some, an ordinary day is a monumental task, made large and seemingly insurmountable by every type and kind of human challenge. For others an ordinary day is a precious commodity made rare by stress and circumstance.
You never know when ordinary will make you a dashing hero or when the potatoes you peeled will light a child’s smile for the golden chips that they made.
Have courage, do the ordinary, and look for the magic that hides there every day.
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TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today features the Queen of Wands and forging your own path forward
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Available most weekdays here, on the podcast, Instagram reels and YouTube #Shorts.
Today’s Card is the Queen of Wands.
Historic realities about queen aside, in Tarot Queens are leaders. Today the image that comes to mind is a unique and strong leader akin to a Boudica or Elizabeth the First sort of figure. This is not a person to be messed with. As I read them, the Queen and King cards are two sides of the same coin. Queens and Kings are the yin and yang of leadership. The king protects the boundaries facing outward and the queen organizes, inspires and nurtures the inner kingdom.
Wands have to do with the element of fire and the inner world, which translates to creativity and passions.
Very often queen cards turn up for people who are actively engaged in caring professions. Absolutely the advice is to care for oneself. Our caretaker are the ones who we want to have the strength and mental, emotional and physical reserves and resources to continue their vital work. At the same time, they are the ones most likly to overextend, and some of the most vulnerable to burnout. In a rare social conversation with a physician, I’ve learned that the pandemic is as crushing and exhausting to healthcare providers as it is portrayed on the news. I didn’t intend for this to veer into a public service announcement, but please do every little thing you can to keep yourself healthy so they don’t have to do it for you in a bigger way.
That being said, in this age of the pandemic, the notion of self-care and trying to protect the care-takers is a constant undercurrent with the queen of wands card.
Today, however, another energy steps forward as well. It has that “step up” strength and leadership quality that all of the queen and king cards posses. It is akin to that notion of taking care of the caretakers by lessening their load by being responsible for yourself. But it is a little more abstract than public health.
Today’s energy is about your inner passions, whatever they may be, and independence.
Following your dreams isn’t easy. Sometimes it exacts a high price in the form of independent creativity. You would expect the word “forge” to step forward with a swords card, but today the word isn’t very literal. In this case the word “forge” is pointing toward the act and process of creating something brand new from raw materials. The energy is about something cut from whole cloth as they say…if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphors. Forges and cloth don’t mix well in real life.
For our purposes, it is a little more apt. The fire and flames imagery offers a hint at the kind of dream following the card is pointing toward. This is no ordinary goal. Beyond some misty, ill-defined aspiration this is talking about your passion.
It’s not about some burning, all-consuming enthusiasm about the thing in the moment. It is about the effect the object of your passion has on you. What is it that lights you up and makes you happy? What is it that, to your mind, makes sense out of everything else? What is the one thing that makes you feel like it is all worth while?
Anything that improves the quality of life that much might ask a lot in return. Finding and following a passion that gives you happiness and meaning to life can exact a high price. The price it asks is nothing less than asking you to create something brand new. It asks you to carve out your own path and forge ahead, very often independently and on your own.
Right now the energy isn’t so much focused on the diadactic steps or about how you forge the path to following your passion. Right now, the first step is to be clear about what that passion really is. Second, think about the personal and emotional costs to following your passion. You may well be asked to act independently, responsibly, and alone. That kind of independent creativity is the flame in which life paths are forged.
Thank you so much for reading, listening and watching today’s short sip Tarot. Short sip readings and other Tarot content is available here, on the TaoCraft Tarot podcast, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and more. I appreciate your support through likes, subs, shares, follows as well as the virtual coffee mug and memberships on Ko-fi. Thanks again and I’ll see you at the next sip.
The video features the heart of stars tarot deck by thom pham, used with his kind permission. For a limited time you can order this unique deck at the heart of stars tarot website.
Back from a long weekend, normal hours the test of this week…email distance tarot, no appointment needed MOST readings delivered within 12 hours. Fastest service is daytime weekdays US eastern time. In-person individual sessions ard back, all the usual policies and restrictions apply, details HERE
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.
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.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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