quote – Page 7 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

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.

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

Today’s Tarot: Rent Well Spent

“Money can’t buy happiness. But it sure can rent it for a while.”
Kim Grunenfelder, comedien

Invest in your happiness. It helps if you can be happy with things that fit your budget.

“Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.” – Oscar Wilde

Today’s Tarot: Coffee and Contemplation

I’m so not a morning person.

One of my absolute favorite lines from any series ever was in Stranger Things when Sheriff Hopper said that “mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”

*raises mug of dark roast to THAT idea*

The Four of Cups has that sort of feel to it. Cups cards reflect close circle relationships. You can’t get any closer to you than you. Tarot is first and foremost an art form of personal development and personal internal spiritual practice. All that crime drama horror movie predict the future fix your love life nonsense is exactly that. Unsurprisingly, all of the cards have some aspect, even a minor one, that can help us to engage with life in a more satisfying way. You know, like the “personal enrichment” use in the small print disclaimer.

When I say satisfying I mean satisfying like a hot cuppa coffee on a day that starts just a little too early.

The Four of Cups has been read to mean all sorts of things: dissatisfaction, (look at the guy’s pouting toddler body language on the card) moping, abiding, meditation, abiding with emotional pain, thoughts or activity below the surface, serenity, meditation, contemplation.

The idea that steps most forward to my mind is the meditation and contemplation one.

I ‘hear’ (meaning that the intuition comes as mental words instead of mental images, so no, when I say that I’m not hearing things for goodness’ sake) – but “meet your meditation where it lives.”

And I do mean meditation.

For some a long run is meditative. Knitting is meditative. Braiding bullwhips is meditative. For others it is the classic cushin sitting zazen TM meditation style. As I understand it, there is a lot of overlap between zen, ch’an, taoist and transcendental meditation styles and it seems that everyone who tries it, loves it. Meditation is a pleasure. If not, I suspect you’ve been told something if not wrong, at least unhelpful.

But anyway, the point is you can sit under any tree to meditate. You don’t have to sit under a tree at all. Meditating is easy. Finding where and how it naturally, easily fits into your life is a good first step.

Even if your first meditative step of the day is contemplating a good mug of coffee.

Today’s Tarot: Of two minds, and neither one has an answer

Of the different meanings for the Two of Swords, “of two minds” comes to mind. A lot of times when we think of that, it means that two options are equal, and there is no obvious, logical, good way to decide between the two. There is six of one and half dozen of the other as they saying goes.

So what do you do when you are of two minds and both options are equal: equally bad that is? What do you do when you don’t know what to do at all? What do you do when you are of two minds and neither one of them knows what to do?

It’s ok not to know. It’s ok for some things to be unknowable. And it’s ok to try and find out. If you don’t know, ask. If you don’t know, learn. If you don’t know, welcome to the universe. It is like that sometimes. We haven’t figured it all out, and that’s OK too.

“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
Richard Feynman

Dressed for work

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Page cards in Tarot are about learning. Swords can denote several things: the element of air, taking action, our relationship with culture, society and authority, or they can symbolize the mind and intellect. My attention is drawn to a combination of intellect and action. It reminds me of that quote where Emerson describes common sense as “genius dressed in its working clothes.”

Genius at work is our learning mode, which can apply to anyone, anywhere, in any stage of life. Learning is a lifelong thing whether we are running particle accelerators or poking something with a stick to see what happens. Mind and body are one whole, so learning and action are an integrated whole as well. Even if big genius ideas drop into our head seemingly out of nowhere, something triggered it or some unique set of material experiences hit critical mass and turned on the proverbial light bulb over our head. However they happen, genius insight doesn’t help us much unless we do something with them. Physical realm interacts with the intellectual realm which prompts action in the physical world and so on in an unending dance of learning and experience gathering. It is about figuring out a method and trying something, admitting failures and trying again. That applies to all sorts of learning. Science is a way of learning about the outer, tangible world. Tarot is one method of learning about the inner, intangible one. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, far from it. If anything they are bound together as intimately as space and time, locked in the complex dance of our humanity.

Today’s card is asking us to use what we know, and fearlessly learn what we don’t.

In the spirit of learning and doing, I have a quick announcement.

As you know, I don’t keep an office or any sort of brick and mortar location, primarily to cut my overhead and keep my prices lower than they otherwise would be.

Since that means bringing people out into the public sphere for an in-person session I’ve decided to use CDC reported community transmission rates for Allegheny county as the guide for in-person sessions. The rate is on the rise, and we have been upgraded from low to moderate. Due to that, starting Sunday July 25 in-person services are on temporary hold again until community transmission rates drop back to low.

Distance Tarot is my specialty

I say that because I’m just as good at writing and doing readings by email as I am doing them in person. I know a lot of psychics and Tarot readers who do both in-person and distance readings equally well, but several of them have commented to me that they don’t enjoy working by email as much as they do in person or by phone. I do both equally well and I enjoy both too.

So PLEASE – while we all endure these last hills, bumps and turns of this roller coaster ride of a pandemic, don’t hesitate to make use of the email version if you are interested in getting a reading. I promise you will get the same information as you would if we were meeting face to masked up face.

Plus don’t forget the cutesy pants promotional $1 TAROT SALE where 7 card email readings are $1 for each year of Tarot reading experience that I bring to your reading (AKA – $10 off the usual price). Offer ends 20 September 2021

Order email readings 24/7 on the home page or HERE