Tag: quote

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Speckles

No pressure.

There is zero big deal here. Pick a card, think about the vibe. If it is helpful, use it. If it isn’t, ignore it. I believe that, at risk of sounding like an old Blondie song, one way or another the message you need will get to you if you let it. It might be through the card you choose here. It might be through the crystal that goes with it. So choose quickly on impulse. Stop the video and think about it…it’s all good. Even if your cue(s) don’t come through this at all, heads up, eyes open. Synchronicity is your friend. Spirit whispers through random coincidence if you listen well.

Blue Kayanite – loyalty, fair communication, throat chakra

Red Jasper – nurturing, endurance, warrior stone, base (sacral) chakra

Rose Quartz – inspires compassion & peace, attracts love & romance, heart chakra

Left: Devil. This isn’t predicting something bad will happen. Many times it is a “heads up” acknowledging the reality of evil in the world. There are people out there doing not-good things. The world doesn’t always have your best interests at heart, protect yourself. But that isn’t the vibe today. Oh no, it’s WAY worse than that. It is about you facing the worst of yourself. Some call this shadow work, coming to terms with parts of your own personality and psyche that make the rest of you uncomfortable. If you choose this card, I suggest researching some Carl Jung. *

Center: Six of Pentacles. Generosity and Reciprocity. The card symbolizes generosity of both money (or other physical resources) and a generosity of spirit. There is also a sense of connection to Queen of Wands energy…you can’t be generous with others if you are tapped out yourself. Curate your resources, your health and your energy. When you feel and are abundant in resources it is easier to give generously, and more importantly, authentically of yourself. Doing something because you should or you have to is far more draining than the same thing given spontaneously without attachment to the should or have to part of it.

Right – Five of Cups. A card of melancholy, mourning and bittersweet endings. This feels oddly targeted. It lends itself the most of the three cards to that individuals connected, individuals within a joined matrix impression (like the stones in the video card) It boarders on that trope “I don’t know who needs to hear this…” This is targeted to those who have had a romantic relationship end recently. The advice is to honor the pain. Acknowledge it and feel it in order to move on to healing it. You don’t have to sweep sad, upsetting things under the rug. You don’t have to pretend hurtful things didn’t happen. Whatever the hurt or loss may be, walk through the hurt and the feelings at your own pace. It may not seem like it now, but a time will come when you can move on, even it is a bittersweet progress. Now the energy moves into a regretful letting go, a realization that it is time to move on. The rose quartz is gentle and loving. It can help heal heartbreak, then help attract new, healthy love when the time is right.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Carl Jung

Tarot is an excellent tool and method for just the kind of self-discovery that Dr. Jung speaks of here. I’m not a psychologist, but I can help you learn to use Tarot for yourself or give you an individual advice and guidance reading that can help you with your self-discovery, personal enrichment, spiritual expression or heart-healing learning.

* The morning after this post first published, this showed up in my Twitter feed: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/matauryn/2018/04/29/integrating-the-shadow/

I recommend the article along with Mr. Auryn’s book Psychic Witch.

Order PeaceTarot (a how-to guide to diy daily meditation Tarot readings) available as a .pdf instant download from the TaoCraftTarotShop on Etsy HERE

Order distance Tarot readings (my specialty) with no appointment required HERE

Duly Noted

“Growing Ogres” was a challenging post to write. You can tell because it’s long. Einstein was right – “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

There are three basic layers to talking about layers in Tarot: easy, hard and hot mess.

Reading for yourself is easy. I can teach you to interact with the cards by yourself for yourself in no time. In a short ebook in fact. You can order it HERE. And yes, I’m still working on a second edition. We’re gonna need it when this whole pandemic thing is over. Adjusting is hard. Adjusting BACK is hard too.

Reading for other people is hard. Interacting with the cards, plus the intuitive messages from energy/spirit plus communicating that message effectively to the client, plus business ethics plus ethics ethics…professional Tarot reading has several layers of complexity and levels of difficulty above grabbing your favorite deck for a little guidance every now and then.

Describing my side of the table and the inner workings of intuitive readings is wildly complicated because it requires taking a reader right up to the edge of silent mysteries and individual experiences. Trying to put the wordless into words can turn into a hot mess in a heartbeat. Or, in the words of Lau Tzu, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

All I really needed to say was the combination of video and text wasn’t working out the way I’d hoped, so I’m changing it back.

I’ll circle back to personal growth, evolution, authenticity, inner growing new layers, shedding old ones and all of that stuff another time. Meanwhile, if you have any feedback about the tweek in the layout names or the audio/visual combo experiment, I’d love to hear it.

If you are interested in the video & text combination, check out the “Today’s Tarot” posts and the weekly “YouChoose Interactive Tarot” posts.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

Jeff Rich

Growing Ogres

Shrek: ….ogres are like onions

Donkey: They stink?

….

Shrek: No! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers

from “Shrek” copyright 2001 Dreamworks Pictures, quote via imdb.com

Layers mean complexity. Layers apply to all sorts of things that are actually more complex than they seem at first glance; ogres, onions, cakes and – you guessed it – Tarot.

Reading Tarot for yourself is actually quite simple. In a couple of hours I could teach you to do good DIY readings for yourself. (Related: PeaceTarot ebook)

Reading for other people is another story. High level professional readings are, like onions and ogres, more complex than it seems on the surface. That’s the whole point of them. A professional reading can gives you extra layers of insight and experience that you can’t get alone. Two heads are better than one. Two eyes give depth perception (related post: parallax) The two of us working together gives your reading another layer of understanding.

Sometimes layers talk about authenticity. Sometimes you have to peel back a few layers to get to the real heart of the matter. We’ve talked about authenticity and public Tarot practice before, after my Modern Oracle Tarot work was re-branded to TaoCraft Tarot (related: what’s in a name, Shakespear’s Roses, Spell Your Name)

That’s all well and good, but consider another aspect of layers: growing new ones. Interestingly, actual onions grow on the inside. New layers are added at the core while older outside layers get dry and thin and ultimately fall away. In this, onions give us another useful metaphor.

In the medical field, and no doubt many other professions, continuing education is a condition of licensure and employment. You have to keep learning and keep current if you want to keep working. Whether it is required or not, whether it is career related or not, lifelong learning is a respected mark of excellence. Learning isn’t just formal education. Learning comes from experience and experimentation and the living of life. Artists’ work evolves over time. Any person’s point of view can evolve over time.

And so, the “Modern Oracle” layout is evolving. I’m calling abort on the video / text hybrid format. It was an experiment that failed, and I’ve learned something important from it.

Remember how deeper layers are often perceived as more authentic and how old layers of growing onions turn papery and fall off? It’s time for the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle layouts to evolve, to become more authentic, to show more of their inner complexity. The video hybrid isn’t the way for that to happen. The names of layout card positions are changing. It’s a tiny detail that you may not even notice from your side of the Tarot table. On my side of the table it is important shift in mindset. This allows me to fully and authentically follow what intuition and spirit shows me.

I wrote the initial layout meanings to create a bridge from old fashioned, predict-the-future, fortune telling layouts to a more modern advice, guidance and empowerment reading. I wrote the Modern Oracle layouts specifically to show the power of your choices over your future. Cards that once were called “past, present and future” in the old style became “lessons from the past, current situation, and moving forward.” Predicting the future evolved into making an action plan.

Now it will go one step further. I in my minds’s eye, I see a reading in terms of dynamic energy flows, not a concrete road through time. As Modern Oracle layouts become TaoCraft layouts, we will let go of time and predictions entirely. If the Modern Oracle layout was like GPS map for your path ahead, the TaoCraft layout is like a GPS traffic update with a weather report.

Card 1, lessons from the past, will become Fading Energies, symbolizing energies that are moving away from you. These are things that need less of your attention.

Card 2, current situation, will become Current Energies, the energies that are strongest, and deal with things that need your attention in this moment.

Card 3, moving forward will become Growing Energies, energies moving toward you, or gaining influence in the path you’ve currently chosen. It still isn’t predictive. It is still intended to guide you, help you prepare for possible conditions ahead. Think of it like a weather report. It doesn’t tell you exactly what will happen to you during your day, but it can give you the chance of rain or sun while it happens.

Card 4 will remain Choices. It is still placed under the current energies card and at the center of the layout because that is still the place of power. Empowering your choices is still the heart of the reading. The choices card will take on a more advisory tone than before. Instead of suggesting how to persist or how change your path, it focuses on whether changing or whether staying the course is the wisest thing to do.

Card 5 is still Alternative Path just like before, showing the most open alternative path you if you decide a change is needed. (Or it can help keep you on your path if you like the way things are headed.)

Card 6 Helping Energies and card 7 Potential Challenges are the same as always, and speak to exactly what the name implies.

Long story short, if you are dead set on a specific “accurate” prediction, you aren’t going to like the new TaoCraft layouts. If that’s the case, you need the Zombie Cat yes/no readings like we did the other day. Even then, you have to realize it isn’t 100%.

If you are ready for next level, dynamic energy readings, I can help. Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot.

,

Kitten Whiskers: Buddha and the Crackpickles

What’s the use of having your own blog if you can’t have a little fun with it every now and then? It’ll never be a scheduled thing, but “Kitten Whiskers” is the name for posts where I go rando fangirl for a few of my favorite things.

“I’m hungry,” Sloan said. She was jittery and getting on my nerves.

“You’re not hungry.” I said

“How would you know?”

“It’s just subliminal suggestion. You feel an increase in appetite because you’re watching a guy eat.”

“The pickles here,” she said.

“I know.”

“Right?”

“I know.”

It’s like they put something in them that makes you crave them all the time. It might be crack. Do you think they put crack in the pickles? Like maybe in the, what do you call it? The stuff in the jar with the pickles?”

Easy Buddha by Brett Dinelli, all rights reserved, used with permission.

I have learned how to make crackpickles.

NO they do NOT have crack in them. Not even in the stuff in the jar. They are just good old fashioned deli style fermented pickles. But YES, they are heavily crave-able. I mean, you seriously, seriously want one at random times. Especially when there is a big old jar of them in the ‘fridge that you made with you own little hands for a fraction of the price of those tiny little tubs in the grocery store.

When the lockdown first hit, I did the sourdough thing like everyone else. Mostly because jars of yeast for baking was nowhere to be found and we were in serious grilled cheese and cinnamon roll comfort food mode.

Sourdough is, after all, a sort of fermenting. Maybe my prohibition era Appalachian ancestors were whispering though the ages to amp up my fermenting skills. Maybe it was my love of dill pickles. But sourdough gave way to pickle making.

After googling up a storm for hints, tips and recipes (not to mention all the probiotic goodnesses of fermented food) plus several months of experimentation I found the magic formula for our version of crackpickles. That isn’t to say anyone else would like them…or be able to get past the slightly funky looking brine (you know, the jar juice) Here is our favorite version. It is in the middle between the throw anything in a crock with some saltwater and a plate on top school of thought and the water lock fermenting lids that look like they escaped from Frankenstein’s laboratory.

Here is what I consider essential gear:

  1. Cucumbers. Nothing fancy. Just the big, ordinary cucumbers from the grocery story. We tried some fancy bumpy cucumbers that were supposed to be THE ones for pickling. They weren’t.
  2. A wide mouth mason jar. I started with just one (they sell singles at Michael’s craft store and probably lots of places during gardening and canning season) If you start with just one, it lets you experiment at small scale until you find your true love addictive recipe. More and larger jars are easy enough to find if you want to ramp up production later on.
  3. Fermentation lid and weight. I used the single starter kit from Mason Jar Lifestyle. It was affordable, with a simple, elegant design. Easy. And no, they didn’t sponsor this or give me a sample. I bought it just like everyone else. This is random fangirling, remember?

The Recipe:

  1. Wash and dry your jar(s) lid(s) and weight(s) Any kind of canning or food prep like this is one of those crazy scrupulous clean freak kind of things.
  2. Put a bay leaf in the bottom of the jar (optional) for crispness
  3. Chunk, slice, quarter or whatever cut the cucumbers and pack them into the jar. Stuff them in there…you’ll get the hang of it. A tight fit is good.
  4. Dissolve 1 rounded Tbs salt in 2 cups of chlorine free water for each quart jar. Casper the friendly lactobaccilus doesn’t like chlorine or the iodine, so don’t use those. Iodine-free fine granular sea salt or pickling salt with filtered water worked well for us. Tried some fancy pink Himalayan in one batch because it was close at hand from another recipe. Tasted fine, but made some deeply weird looking pink sludge at the bottom of the jar.
  5. sprinkle 1 Tbs of dill weed (yeah, I used dried and it gets all over the pickles. So what?) and 1 tsp of granulated garlic (yeah it makes the brine look cloudy and a little suspect in the end, but it is really ok. Honest!) over the cucumbers in each quart jar.
  6. Pour the salt water over the cucumbers until jar is filled. Put the glass weight on top to keep the cucumbers submerged and close with the fermenting lid.
  7. Let them set for two weeks at room temperature. Tweek the lid once a day to release any carbon dioxide that forms. If you forget, the lid will spit juice out all over the place as it releases the gas and you might have to add a little more salt water to top it off. Days 3-5 seem to be the most bubbly and science experiment-y
  8. At the end of a week or two of wondering if you have just made a jar of botulism sauce, take a whiff. If it smells bad, or is moldy, pitch it all, wash the daylights out of the jar and try again. If it smells like mouth watering dill pickles, try one. If it tastes good, put a regular lid on it and store the jar in the refrigerator. If the pickle isn’t sour enough, let them go another week or two at room temperature before moving them to the refrigerator. I have no idea how long they will last beyond that. We ate ours within a couple of days.
  9. Buy more jars and fermenting lids. This may ruin you for store bought vinegar based pickles.

While you are eating your new pickles, get yourself a copy of Jimmy the Buddha and the sequal Easy, Buddha both by Brett Dinelli. They are brain candy and comfort food in book form punctuated by moments with all of the feels and brilliant insights. Chapter 8 of Jimmy the Buddha. That. Forever that. It may be a fictional detective adventure, but the characters are deeply relatable and real. Kind of makes you want to put your arms around them, although I suspect Sloan might object.

I’ve never actually met Brett or his special lady and their family, but we have chatted many times on Twitter and I call them friends. *raises cup of medium roast columbian – coffee*

Related: TaoCraft Tarot has playlists on spotify: Rando Fangirl

Today’s Tarot: Two Cup Tuesday

Let’s pour ourselves a second cup and do the thing.

This is not a high wattage card today.

I thought about sharing my favorite salty language internet meme that features the Knight of Pentacles, but the energy isn’t even up to that. The earth connection and the grounded quality is so strong that it escapes levity. This card is 6 am staring across your coffee mug at a chipper morning person. This card is the zombie shuffle to the kitchen for a second cup.

Today’s energy is strongly connected to the physical realm. It is OK to set aside big spiritual questing every now and then. The mind and spirit must be balanced with the physical. This is a day to pour that second cup and do the thing. Grind. To borrow from a shoe company – just do it.

Doing is key. Knights are about action, after all. But this is effective, ruthlessly efficient action, not fidgeting, fuss, emotion or bother. Don’t waste energy on drama. “Work the problem” as was said in the Apollo 13 movie. Or as has been said “Follow the process, not the plan.” (as I read it on Tested.com – this might be my new mantra, just like “simple but elegant” got me through dissertation)

Arguably, this kind of practical, down-to-earth, just-do-it energy IS a high level of spirituality, like the adage “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” or, as I’ve often quoted here before, Alan Watts taught “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while you peel potatoes. Zen spirituality is to just peel the potatoes.”

The practical needs done and the physical realm needs tended to, not matter what our mental, spiritual or emotional state might be. The knight reminds us that immersing in routine work or physical exercise can be very soothing to churning thoughts or upset emotions.