Tag: quote

An essential teacher

Just started reading Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee about Bruce Lee. Martial arts philosophy, Taoism…SO in my wheelhouse. Just a few pages in, and already loving it.

Am thinking about reviving my personal blog “Stuff” on RondaJSnow.me to do writer-y type stuff and all of the not-tarot poopgoo and Kittenwhisker-ish type stuff. After starting this book, I might add book reviews into the mix.

I’m curious. Which would you guys like better? Surf over to the other site and follow that blog (right column on desktop, scroll down on mobile) and get 100% of everything or just read a few select posts cross pollenated onto this one even though it’s off topic? If you can spare a minute, drop a comment and let me which suits you better. While you are there, feel free to give any feedback you want. Luv it, hate it, whatever. Same goes for any Tarot questions you might have.  It can be personal, like the boyfriend question yesterday, or it can be about psychics, intuition, Tarot in general.

Full disclosure: any question that comes to me other than a paid private session will be answered in the blog (scrubbed of any identifying information to protect your privacy of course) It’s kinda like a Tarot swap meet – you get a free one card reading, I get blog/podcast content. Don’t forget two important things 1. The answer is more than likely going to be in full Zombie Cat mode so be prepared for a little light snark and 2. Any and all spam or inappropriate anything will be destroyed in a blinding flash of hellfire. TaoCraft Tarot is a safe space and I am the absolute ruler and gatekeeper and writer of the policies to which it all is subject.

On other words, ask Zombie Cat anything in the comments, but do so at your own peril.

What do you think?

If you aren’t feeling the blog / Zombie Cat thing, private readings by email are available to order anytime, no appointment needed HERE

A Sip of Tarot: nourish

Today’s card is the Lovers from the major arcana

Just like the Death card, The Lovers has a TV & movie reputation apart from the card’s actual, traditional meaning. Everyone loves the Lovers. But it isn’t always about finding the love of your life or a grand romance.

The Lovers card is about any deep down desire, not necessarily the torrid romance novel kind. Often in a reading this card will advise figuring out what you really want in order to take steps toward it. Choice is less popular as a card meaning, but it has been associated with the Lovers across many decks and references.

Not only do you choose who and what you love, you choose TO love at all.

There is a quote attributed to Sitting Bull*: “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.”

Put that with today’s card and you get the message to, metaphorically speaking, choose the dog you feed.

If you have followed the blog over the past year or so, we’ve talked about general zeitgeist cultural energies, and how all those stresses had affected energy sensitive people. The fear surrounding the pandemic and political upheaval here in the U.S. had been ringing a lot of peoples bells so to speak.

That general energy resonance is still fairly strong, but it has changed. It’s been shifting for a while now. The resonant bell-ringing among clients seems a little less widespread. The focus has shifted from the collective to the individual, from external to the internal, from practical physical realm survival to internal emotional and spiritual quality of life. It is a time for choosing the dog we feed.

And I have to emphasize the part where Sitting Bull describes it as an internal struggle. If it is projected as anything but a personal internal choice, the adage can go entirely off the rails.

My mind is also drawn to the Tina Turner song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” from the 1980s movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome . We’ve survived the energy and emotional thunderdome of 2020-21.

We have a once in a lifetime chance to choose how we step out of the dome and move beyond it. Every moment of every day we have a chance to choose which parts of ourselves we nourish. Today’s card suggests that we choose love.

A Sip of Tarot: On Schedule

Today’s card is The Hanged Man from the major arcana.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson famously said that “the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” By the same token, life is under no obligation to meet our time schedules. Sometimes things take a frustratingly long time to happen. Sometimes things go so slowly nothing seems to be happening at all. Other times life goes lightning fast and takes us by surprise.

Time is literally changeable at super high speeds. Even right here, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, our perception of time seems entirely fluid. Perception is part of the key energy around the card today.

I’ve often said that with the Hanged Man, one person’s stuck in the mud is another person’s day at a spa. As with so many things, a small shift in perspective can change your feeling and experience enormously. One pattern I’ve seen in readings over the years is that a narrow focus on the path ahead breeds frustration. If one aspect of life is taking too long to happen, or if you feel stuck and making no progress, maybe that is another area of life grabbing you by the elbow and trying to get you to pay attention to something else. If things are going slowly, maybe it is because life doesn’t want you to whizz right by the scenery on the side of the road. If you feel stuck, it might be an opportunity in disguise to rest, stop, really see and appreciate where you are right now before running ahead to something new.

Thank you all for reading and listening! I’ll see See you next time on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and the next Sip of Tarot episode of the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast.

Your Attention Makes It Sacred

mindfulness consecrates

Today’s card is the Chariot from the major arcana portion of the Tarot deck.

I always think of this as the jet pilot card. That is probably influenced by all of the Richard Bach books I read in my 20s. Whether it is a chariot in a race like the old movie Ben Hur, driving the beltway at rush hour or flying a supersonic aircraft, you have to pay attention to what you are doing or end up in a crumpled heap somewhere. I’ve never done any of those things, but I imagine it is a heck of a lesson in mindfulness.

Besides helping you to survive at high rates of speed, paying attention does some other nifty stuff at the complete other end of the velocity spectrum.

Mindfulness consecrates.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein hints at this too. Toward the end of the book, I think it was Mary Jane who described the title character, Valentine Michael Smith “…when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe and the moment is eternal…”

When you pay full attention to where you are it makes that place special. When you pay full attention it makes that moment special. When you pay full attention to another person it makes magic for both of you.

Thank you so much for reading the blog and listening to the podcast. If you have any questions, please contact me at the email listed in the right hand column on the blog or in the episode description of the podcast. Don’t be shy! You might get a free Tarot reading in a podcast episode. Don’t worry. I keep any identifying information out of the conversation. Someone else might be in the same boat, and you’ll be helping them, too.

Just a reminder: if you follow Tao Craft Tarot blog you get everything, the whole enchilada, every bit of Tarot content I create including links to Clairvoyant Confessional podcast, notices when member only content goes live, card draw videos and the print only blog posts. See you on the print side!

A Sip of Tarot: The Struggle Is Real

A pyrrhic victory is a win at enormous cost. You win, but there is absolute carnage everywhere by the time you are done. The name comes from ancient history. I’m not sure, but I think elephants were involved (cue Eddie Izzard – I love her sketch on Latin)

The five of swords tend to be, ultimately, a positive energy card, hinting at likely victory (the dude on the card looks kind of smiley) but you still have to consider the cost. One of the meanings I’ve seen for the card is ‘stubborness’

One of my favorite internet memes is paraphrased G.K. Chesterson quote, “A [warrior] fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.” I think the meme’s substitution of “warrior” for Chesterson’s “true soldier” speaks to the essence of a warrior. It speaks to the difference between defense and blind violence.

There will always be challenges in life. There will be times we have to defend our limits and boundaries. The struggle is real, but what price victory? Are you fighting to project (your idea) or protect (those you love)?

Today’s Tarot: A Layer of Mystery

Today’s Tarot card is the High Priestess from the major arcana.

In physics, or at least in popularized science shows, they say higher dimensions are in contact with us. The fifth dimension and higher are described as being impossibly close to each and every object, each and every cell in our bodies. The mysteries of the universe are literally close at hand. Magic lives within the mundane.

Arthur Clark famously said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” To my limited education in the matter, higher dimensions and quantum physics more than sufficiently advanced to seem that way. I wonder if all the sturm and drang about writers connecting advanced science to esoteric philosophy being “pseudoscience” is really just a matter of semantics. If a person is untrained in physics and calculus but adept at philosophy and spirituality, of course they are going to default to non-scientific language to communicate difficult ideas. It isn’t “pseudo” any more than English is a pseudo language compared to Swahili or vice versa.

Arguably saying “the apples fall off trees” has more real life value than saying “gravitational force is equal to the mass of two objects multiplied together, divided by the distance between their centers then multiplied by the gravitational constant” Both are true, both are valid and both have their own kind of importance.

Whether you call it higher dimensions, universal life energy, the Force, the Tao, or just plain magic, the mystical parts of life are integrated within the mundane. Mystery is a close layer beneath everything.

Thank you for reading and listening.

Today’s Tarot short format card readings by Ronda Snow of TaoCraft Tarot are available on multiple platforms starting in October 2021. Find these sip of tea sized Tarot readings on YouTube Shorts, Clairvoyant Confessional podcast, the blog page on Tao Craft Tarot .com and on the Tao Craft Tarot’s ko-fi .com blog.

The main blog contains print-only content not available anywhere else.

The ko-fi blog contains members-only content not available anywhere else.

Today’s Tarot: Grind the Cigars

Today’s Tarot card is the 8 of Pentacles.

Basically, it’s a day to just do normal stuff. Grind it out. Get it done. There are no big spiritual or aspirational energies around the card today. It’s all about just building a life brick by brick, step by step, moment by moment.

Even in Tarot, not everything is a big spiritual revelation. Not everything in life has a big symbolic purpose. Like Freud said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Come back tomorrow for the spiritual stuff. For now, at least for today, go grind the cigars.

Today’s Tarot: Low Pressure System

I like anime.

I watched the one and only season of Cowboy Bebop for the first time surprisingly recently. Funny how all of that adulting can get in the way of your TV watching time. The whole thing was as awesome as I’d always heard.

Spike Spiegel came to mind with the Two of Pentacles this morning because of the episode on Venus where he was teaching the kid in the airport how to fight. I was all about being relaxed which gives you clarity, control and speed.

That’s a real thing, by the way. Staying relaxed and breathing was my biggest nemisis in my brief spin through martial arts sparring back in the day.

Spike pretty much summed up the classic Bruce Lee “be water my friend” interview:

If Taoist influenced Jeet Kun Do isn’t your cup of water, then a weather report captures the same idea.

Storms are driven by low pressure. The most destructive hurricanes have the lowest atmospheric pressure at the center.

Beware the quiet ones. Relaxed fighters are the ones in control. Like the figure on the Two of Pentacles, you might have to juggle your way through a life that is a circus on the outside. If you can find SOME way to find your calm, find your low pressure center, then you aren’t just another circus act. You are, as the popular internet meme says, the storm.

source unknown, presumed public domain

Today’s Tarot: Paging New Ideas

Neither science nor spirituality is of any use to a closed mind. That which does not change is dead.

Being mercurial, shallow and capricious is of equally little use.

The middle way is, as is most often the case, the best option. Be open to new ideas, but evaluate them before taking them to heart. Question everything, but if something stands up to that questioning, allow it to win credence. Belief can, must, change in the face of facts.

Shakespeare wrote that “Cowards die many times before their deaths, but the valiant taste of death but once.” The same is true of those willing to adapt, to change, to consider new ideas and new ways of doing things. To ossify the mind is to allow the spirit to die young.

“Everything in this book might be wrong.” – Richard Bach

Today’s Tarot: Squint and Stare

“You reap what you sow” is both the threat of consequences for the bad choices you make and the promise of the good things you give coming back to you. Sometimes you have to stop, lean on your garden hoe, squint and stare at things a bit to figure out which is which.

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” – Nicolaus Copernicus

“And I know what I know girl. But I don’t know what I know when I know it” – The Kongos