Tag: Sage Snow

We Made The Machines

The only real oracle is human intuition. We made the machines that make the art.

public domain image via creative commons

I’m as cyberpunk as the next Tarot reader.

Probably way more so. There are reasons why I thrive doing email readings. They are my best work, tbh.

But there are also reasons why I love using the Lofi Girl / Lofi Chill aesthetic to describe my Tarot style. I can be all synthwave and cyberspace but still keep the lo-fi human touch which is the whole point of Tarot in the first place.

78 cards raised to the power of near infinite combinations of any one shuffle raised to the power of layout position times the different layout possibilities – is a bigger number than I can calculate. Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great explainer on TikTok about the shuffle thing.

Tarot excels at dealing with human thoughts and emotions but there are some things about the human condition and external environment that early Tarot readers could never imagine.

Imagine what will come to be that is off the far front of OUR radar.

If I were to create a brand new Tarot card, it’d be technology of some sort. Maybe a cyberpunk looking radio telescope. I think some oracle decks already have cards like that.

Artificial Intelligence and machine made art is one thing early Tarot readers probably never envisioned If they imagined it, I’m guessing it would have been understood in a different context. I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Their magic is our AI.

We made the machines that make the art. I wonder if anyone has made a Tarot deck with ChatGPT yet. If not, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.

Regardless of who or what or how the cards are generated, the one, the only, the true oracle is pure human intuition. Cards are just tools no matter what tools humans use to create the cards.

As far as I know, you can’t mimic intuition with a bot.

All I know is that I don’t use any of it.

Email is as technical as it gets with my readings. The readings will always be me, a keyboard and a photo of your unique real-world actual physical cards in a real world, actual, physical card layout – no AI at all.

The problem with AI right now is not so much the technology as the copyright. I actually like the AI generated aesthetic that is everywhere on social media these days. I’d love to have book covers look like that – but I’d feel terrible taking a REAL artist’s creation for a book cover without their knowledge or consent. So I haven’t even played with AI for fun yet.

I know the amount of work it takes to write something and write it well. I respect copyrights and intellectual property and expect the same in return. While the posts on Sage Sips blog are non-derivative noncommercial attribution share alike creative commons 4.0 licensed. That means you can quote and share all you like so long as you give me credit for writing it, don’t change it and don’t charge money for it. Fair enough, right? Especially considering everything here is my own creation, my own hard work – no AI help at all.

Next up is the three card Energy Path reading for the week that will post on Monday, but for now it’s time for my lo-fi human self to go get another cup of coffee.

See you at the next sip!

Weekend Update Rolls On

The Wheel turns into the weekend.

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Yesterday was quite a week as they say. I personally am very glad to see the weekend get here. I’m also still into the idea of revisiting the energy path reading from Monday to see if and how anything has unfolded now that it is, thankfully, Friday. Four days is nothing so the changes won’t be dramatic, ever.

Time does keep turning, just like the Wheel major arcana card. “Churning” comes to mind as well as an active old-fashioned water wheel or the paddle wheel of an old Mississppi River steam boat.

On Monday, the “growing energy” card in the pathway layout was the Wheel. It is by nature a churning, changing, dynamic kind of energy. I think the Wheel’s energy has increased a bit over the past few days. My sense of it for the next few days life will be on the energetic side. This is a major arcana card, after all. I hear (‘hear’ meaning the intuition comes as words instead of mental images) “dating” “social” – in other words it is a good time to get out and around and be social if you are feeling it.

Spirit, energy, life, the universe and everything doesn’t care about our expectations much less our calendars and schedules. In the bigger picture of it all, four days really is next to nothing in the flow of time and energy. Let’s look at a bigger pattern that we’ve seen over the past few weeks of readings (August 21-28, August 28-September 9)

First there was Moon card energy both up front and underlying these current cards. There were a series of water and tide images. Tides are literally associated with the actual moon, so that certainly fits the card. First we were given the image of “slack water” that wasn’t moving much, then the tide turned and flowed inward, and now I get the image of an outward flowing tide, which would match that social, outward, dating and fun energy that came through a moment ago.

This week we have the Wheel card, which is a card of change. That part of the Wheel connects with the “natural cycles” meaning of the Moon card. The cycles meaning has been the dominant moon card meaning this whole time, and the wheel card is validating that. The wheel card is all about change, but also luck, good fortune, taking action so it gives an even stronger “the tide has turned” feeling. The Wheel takes the softer, gentler ‘natural cycles’ Moon energy and makes it much more active, energetic, churning. The tide not only has turned, but it is picking up speed.

Continuing with the water and ocean analogy, the idea of “undercurrent” comes through here. I get the feeling that a subset of us is still flowing inward, with an energy of deep introspection and a need for alone time to sit with difficult emotions and circumstances still exists. In my mind’s eye I see the Five of Cups again and now also the Hermit card.

So as always, follow and trust your own instincts. Allow what your emotions and body is telling you it needs. If you feel pulled to be out and about and are in the mood for a light, fun weekend then by all means indulge if you can. By the same token, if you feel gloomy and introspective, don’t fight it. Sitting with that side of things helps us to acknowledge, process and let go in a healthy way.

Weirdly, I get a sense that this won’t break along the expected introvert/extrovert personality lines or along any sort of pop culture stereotypical lines. It feels very individual with a mental image of mixed grains of salt and pepper. The best way I can describe the feeling is that this weekend may be a good chance of each individual of us to make friends with our inner opposite. Channel your inner Barbie – or inner Wednesday Addams – as the case may be.

No matter which side of the yin yang symbol you are feeling the most, have a good weekend! Next up: a new Energy Path reading for the week of September 11-18 will post on Monday.

See you at the next sip!

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Odinsday Oracle: Traitor

Etteilla Tarot (public domain) via Alleyman’s Tarot (used with permission)

Yep – back to the the Odinsday Oracle title because Odin was the god of wisdom among many other things in Norse mythology and because I have an irrational enjoyment of alliteration. Wednesday will be oracle card day unless there is a “Learn With Me” series running. The next one of those starts September 20 when we look at the 36 cards of the Lenormand Tarot. I’ll be using the Healing Light deck specifically (Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler © 2020 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission)

Today – back to the Alley. One of the many things I love about The Alleyman’s Tarot is the way Seven Dane Asmund not only gives broad permission for the deck to be customized by the purchaser, but it was intended for that, which perfectly fits the herd of cats that is Tarot readers at large. The whole point of the deck being mis-matched and eclectic from the very start is so cards can be added and subtracted and made into something entirely unique and intensely personalized to the reader using it. A master artist’s skill is evident in any medium, but the experience is synergistically and exponentially elevated for everyone when superior tools are used. It’s like the relationship between a master painter and superior pigments, a master chef and the freshest ingredients, or a master violinist and a Stradivarius violin.

My thing has been to separate the traditional-structure Tarot cards from the “Strange Suit” and “Other Arcana” cards. When they arrive, I’ll add the Alleyway Secret Oracle cards from the more recent Publishing Goblin LLC deck and use the sum total for our Odinsday Oracle posts. As always I’m grateful for permission to use the cards here and in social media posts.

This particular card is the “Traitor” from the mid-1800s Grand Etteilla deck in the French National Library.

The weird thing is that I’m in a little bit of an “I got nothin'” place with the card even though it speaks volumes to me on a personal extended family thing that I’m not going to talk about here because privacy (btw – I go just as hard protecting YOUR privacy, even with the ASK ME ANYTHING questions that are answered in the blog)

It doesn’t help that this is such a succinct, straightforward card. It reminds me of Corban Dallas’ one word answers in the Ruby Rhod scene.

The card is just what it says. Someone’s trust has been betrayed. Are you the betrayed or the betrayer? Where have you made mistakes and misteps either in placing your trust or allowing trust to be placed in you?

Today’s oracle Traitor resonates with Monday’s Five of Cups

No matter which direction it flows, disappointment and betrayal are difficult emotions to process. They are hard mistakes to learn from and all the more painful is there is choice or deliberate action as any part of the situation.

Sometimes you just have to sit with those feelings, experience the whole thing, maybe even wallow for a short while in order to reach a place where you can let the emotions go and things can start to change for the better.

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Heal, Contemplate, Release – again.

Tarot reading for the week: it will get better when you get to the point that you can let it go.

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Hello and welcome to the Energy Path reading for the week of September 4 – 11. I’m glad you are here.

Change and cycles are still a thing this week, but in a different way. It feels like it has moved from a general environment thing to being more personal advice. The lingering Moon card energy from the past few weeks feels like it has turned a corner, ebb is beginning to flow. The mental image here is outgoing tide, not at all the “slack water” energy from a few weeks ago.

At the same time there is emphasis on change. Now it has shifted to a more intense, personal, evolutionary change more than broad, gentle, slow, tectonic shift natural cycles.

Two other things come to mind, generally.

First, we are responsible for who we are now. Yes, life has been hard. Yes, you have experienced trauma of all sorts. Yet, you can heal, you can rise again, you can overcome. Destruction becomes disappointment becomes release.

It gets better when you get to the point where you can, at last, let it go.

“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts

Second, as I listen to my favorite darkwave playlist-

If we choose who we are now, why do I and others choose dark, goth-ish, witchy, INTP, neon cyberpunk self-expression.

Yes, I said choose.

We could be all bright and karen and hot girl summer if we wanted to do that – but we don’t.

And we are doing right by ourselves and our souls and for society at large by doing so. I am reminded of the adage that religion is for people who want to avoid hell while spirituality is for those who have already been there. Perhaps the kindest people are the ones unafraid of the dark because they have walked there so often before.

Sometimes, the most revolutionary thing you can do for your shadow side is to admit it exists.

Why revel in what some call darkness? Consider the alternative: false, toxic positivism.

The Ten of Swords truthfully and directly acknowledges our injuries and our circumstances. The figure stays face down and flat to allow the profound change of either death or healing to begin.

This phase is fading. We’ve been down, so to speak, but the tide is turning. It is time to once again rise.

We rise, not fully transformed, but with lingering disappointment. Traces of old experience can cling. Now is a time of contemplation, of coming to understand what happened and is happening. Swords may be intellect and action, with a certain physicality to it all, if not from our physical person then from our social environment. The Five of Cups is about the emotional aftermath of whatever the Ten of Swords represents for you.

Growing energies are the Wheel. This is the change of the death card plus the cyclic nature of the Moon card plus the transformation energy of the Magician card all rolled into one. We are coming to a potent time of change, and a potent time of choosing the person we will be five minutes from now.

We are under no obligation to be the person we were before but we are under every obligation to choose who we will become five minutes from now.

Cruel or kind, the choice is yours.

Once in a Blue Moon

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There is a Moon vibe still out there.

Two days ago was a “blue moon.” It’s not common, but it’s not spectacular. It’s not something that is going to grab you by the nose and make you look. A blue moon is just two full moons in the same calendar month. It is a subtle thing because most of us go through life not knowing what phase the moon is in on any given night. No matter what the cool social media graphics show, the moon is the same color it always is.

It was also a “super” moon. Google “perigee” and “apogee.” Orbits aren’t perfect circles. They are off a little, just a tiny bit ovalish and wobbly. Sometimes the moon passes just a little bit closer to earth and seems a tiny bit big-ish because of it. That’s a so-called super moon — any full moon during a close perigee kind of orbit.

These little details don’t happen often, and they both happen at the same time less often, but it is still one of those natural cycles we’ve been talking about. It’ll be a while, but there will be another super blue moon in time.

Super moons and blue moons are slow and subtle things. So are tides and seasons and the growth of trees. That’s the kind of changing and shifting energy that has been around lately. Slow, gradual, gentle change but change nonetheless. Even continental drift will get you to the other side of the planet eventually.

I suspect energies will move on come Monday’s Energy Path reading. It feels like the gentle cycle change has peaked and is drifting beyond. Here I again I intuitively hear the song “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Beyond Thunderdome)” It seems like energies are gently moving beyond thunderdome, not back to paradise.

Weekly Digest:

Last Week’s Energy Path (three card Tarot reading)

Wednesday Oracle

Coming Soon:

Monday — Energy Path for September 4–11

Wednesday — “Odinsday Oracle” (aka I like alliteration)

Announcement: Fall hours

Announcement: Halloween Party Favor Tarot readings

Announcement: AI policy 

Email Tarot is OPEN, no appointment needed.

Energy Path Tarot for the week of 21-28 August 2023: Feel, heal, pour, repeat.

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There a cycle here.

You can read more about that over-arching, cyclic Moon major arcana energy in the Weekend Shift post. There is a new focus today, but that gentle, cyclic, guiding Moon card energy is still with us.

Welcome to Sage Sips, Tarot for your week in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

Against the backdrop of Moon energy, I’m getting succinct, common sense, solid useful advice. Eat your vegetable, exercise, get enough sleep, drink enough water, wash your damn hands and when difficult emotions come around, follow this advice.

Interestingly it is an energy cycle very akin to what we were talking about a few weeks ago when Dharma Drum Mountain’s Four Steps for Handling a Problem came to mind. This is pretty much the same idea except it’s directed toward any strong, difficult emotions.

“You can’t fill an empty cup” is one of the best known Zen proverbs. Usually it refers to ego getting in the way of learning and mindful experience. In this case, the cups cards represent emotion. We can let old traumas cripple and pierce and fetter us, like the ten of swords or we can face them honestly and directly and masterfully, like the King of Cups.

Dwelling in the past isn’t a helpful thing in these cases. Just as Dharma Drum’s Ch’an Buddhism teaches us to let go of a problem once we’ve done all in our power to understand and solve it, today’s reading reminds us to let go of emotions that no longer inform us or serve us.

Full emotional cups that are dumped out unceremoniously dumped without thought or consideration just fill up all over again.

Full emotional cups that stay full beyond their time leave no room for growth or new happiness.

I’m not really sure what it means – it feels way out of context – but I ‘hear’ (meaning the intuitione comes as words or music instead of mental images) “Pour one out for your homies.” To me the vibe is like a ceremony or libation or communion with a symbolic pouring or drinking in honor of spirit or a crossed over loved one or something emotional and ceremonial and spiritual like that.

I wonder, too, if the growing energy Ace of Cups turned upside down is a reminder to pay attention to our spiritual life, our communion with whatever it is that we spiritually revere.

*raises mug of coffee to my spirit guide crew in deep gratitude*

Against the backdrop of last week’s Moon card energy, we are given a glimpse into the cycle of healthy human emotional experience: Feel. Abide. Release. Feel again.

Thank you all for reading. I appreciate your time and attention. Your likes, shares, blog follows, private reading orders, questions and comments are always appreciated. See you at the next sip!

It isn’t fine – and it isn’t fear.

K.C. Green webcomic

It’s a meme.

We’ve probably all seen it by now. NPR cites K.C. Green as the creator of the famous “This is fine.” dog. We’ve all witnessed epic levels of denial, coated in metric tons of cognitive and emotional dissonance in the public space over the 10 years since this famous web comic was created.

It isn’t fine.

I’ll leave my void-screaming political views for Threads. For now, I want to stay in my lane and talk about my area of expertise, Tarot.

I think the trick to surviving social media is much like life: look for the big picture, and don’t take it all quite so personally. Curate your space. With that little bit of a step back, social media feels less like being a wide-eyed ingenue in the middle of a conflagration and more like an endless source of writing and art prompts.

Here is today’s thought-provoking juxtaposition.

One Tarot reader offered a breathy, pink chakra, love-and-light video about avoiding scams and finding breathy, heart-filled, pink chakra, love-and-light psychics.

Not my style – but a legit point. There really are bad people who have done bad things under the guise of psychics and Tarot and they have made this work a minefield of problems for the rest of us, whether we are annoyingly toxic positive or otherwise.

The problem here is the way they offered themselves up as the solution to the problem they were fussed up about.

Another reader has a dissenting view. Their thought that these kind of “how to find a good psychic” posts are little more than fear-mongering.

True, but incomplete.

When you caution people about real dangers you have to take great care to offer real solutions that work across the board – not just offer up yourself as the sole solution. If you put yourself out there as the only solution, then you are the scam you are warning about.

As a professional, a genuine high-level psychic reader has an obligation to take on difficult subjects for the sake of the clients we all wish to serve. That includes fear mongers. That includes scams. That includes taking on the subject of finding a trustworthy psychic in this crazy-pants world of “spiritual businesses.”

If we don’t talk about scams and impersonators and the very real pitfalls of finding a psychic we fail to serve the best interests of our clients – and ourselves. If we DO talk about scams and impersonators, to some extent we are engaging in the exact fear mongering that we are warning against.

This business is as fraught for an ethical psychic as it is for the person looking for them.

The best solution I can offer is a middle way where we take on the touch topics but hopefully avoid any problematic narcissism. As always, I take inspiration from Taoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism. In this case, Dharma Drum Mountain says it best:

Face it :  face the difficulty squarely
Accept it :  accept the reality of the difficulty
Deal with it :  deal with the difficulty with wisdom and compassion
Let it go :  afterwards, let go of it

Let’s apply this to the issue at hand.

The difficulty is that crime exists. Psychic scams have been around as long as psychics and scammers. Those crimes has made life much worse for authentic psychics and their clients, both.

No amount of breathy woo woo or stalwart avoidance of fear mongering is going to help. Being a psychic and finding a trustworthy psychic is fraught with real, legitimate problems.

The best solutions I can think of are drawn from the non-psychic, non-spiritual realm: Transparent communication.

  • Get a recommendation from someone you trust, just like you would for a plumber or a hairdresser.
  • Be careful when reading third party reviews. Some reviews are scams in themselves containing websites and phone numbers unrelated to the psychic they are ‘reviewing.’ That is a reflection of the reviewer – not the business)
  • Follow your instincts. If you feel pressured, walk away. A psychic is not an emergency room. You have every right to take the time you need to find the right reading for you.
  • Don’t trust any psychic that targets you INDIVIDUALLY for a reading. Would you trust spam, email phishing or a stalker? Discounts, giveaways, or sales offered to the GENERAL PUBLIC are normal practices for any business. If you approach the psychic, that is one thing. If the psychic approaches you that is entirely and disturbingly different.
  • Look at websites, blogs, social media and advertising to get some sense of their personality. If you think they are a good match for you, talk or email with them BUT be sure to keep it neutral and professional yourself. Ask about normal business related things like hours, appointments, prices, refunds, and so on. Don’t pour your heart out to a stranger or interrogate them like a criminal. If they are open, patient and professional with your average business questions, chances are they will treat your reading with the same respect. High pressure sales, demanding a set number of sessions, promising a specific result, or blaming you for any outcome are all warning signs. If something feels off, trust those feelings.

The letting go step is the hardest part and perhaps the most dangerous point in all of this. YOU are the expert in how you feel. If you try a psychic and it doesn’t work out, by all means walk away and find someone else. With the internet, you have a world of psychics and Tarot readers to choose from. You should never feel pressured into getting more sessions or paying more money. You never have to see a psychic again if you don’t want to. You are the one who must decide if and when you get your next reading.

If you would like to read how I do things, you can download the ebooklet TaoCraft Portfolio HERE for free.

Follow your instincts. We professionals are spirit translators and intuition amplifiers – not ultimate answers.

Follow your instincts. If they lead you to a reading with me, great! Let’s get to work. If not, great! That means you are honoring your path even as I honor mine in writing this.

And that is a fearless, daring thing for us all.

How Tarot Still Works

Behind the scenes peek: what Tarot *really* does for you.

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Lightly edited reprise from Thanksgiving season last year:

You are just perfectly enough just exactly as you are.

Right here. Right now. You already are all you need to be in this moment. Take a deep breath. Are you in any real danger right this very second? If you are, what in the living heck are you doing reading a blog? Take care of yourself for goodness sake!

But if you are reading this, chances are things are OK enough to allow for a little screen time. Even if things are fantastic, take a little time off from that emotional energy and let the time it takes to read this be a bubble of emotional rest for you.

Today’s card is the King of Cups, in reverse. Like we’ve talked about before, I read inversions pretty much the same as upright cards, taking all of the keywords and meanings into consideration all of the time anyway. If the card turns over upside down relative to the person doing the reading, or “reversed” as we call it, it looks right side up to a person on the other side of the table. In three dimensional space, a card can be upright or reversed literally depending on your point of view. Considering the big picture is key in this kind of work. Abstractions, ideas, archetypes, and intuitive nudges all make a tiny bit more sense when you keep it all in perspective in mind during the whole card reading process. When you think big picture, the orientation of the card on the table matters less.

In any reading, public collective or private, a reversal speaks more to the position in the layout than the individual card. Layout position plus a reversed card is a clue to an area of life that may be conflicted, slowed, problematic or blocked. In a one card reading, a reversal can mean a broadly applicable slowing or turbulence in the person’s energies or in the collective, zeitgeist energy

Or not.

Freud once said that “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sometimes a reversed card is just a random happenstance from shuffling the deck.

Except today. Today the King of Cups came up reversed and it feels like it means it.

The reversed King of Cups is about emotional maturity. It connects to the feeling of defeat and brokenness that the Ten of Swords spoke about in “The Lemonade” post recently.

Clairaudience (intuitive hearing) gives the words “Own what you feel.”

2022 may be more bittersweet in retrospect than we realized. (Which is what brought this old post to mind. It resonates a little with yesterdays reading and that trace of melancholy and bittersweet remembrance.)

My mind again goes to those lost to gun violence, or as one newscaster put it to all the chairs that will be tragically empty this holiday season. It is perfectly understandable how grief of this magnitude can leave its mark on the collective energy, both on a conscious and unconscious level. Emotions of every kind tend to run high during the holiday season.

Whatever the emotion, whatever the intensity, whatever the reason, you have to own them and validate them even if no one else will. The emotions exist. They are valid and they are real and, more importantly, they are yours. How you express them and how you act upon them are your responsibility just like a kingdom is the responsibility of the king.

Once acknowledged, emotions can be let go. Once understood, they are less likely to resurface in disruptive ways. It’s not magic. It’s social science. It’s human psychology.

And it’s how Tarot works. Tarot works, not to accurately predict the future, but to help us own and understand our emotions. Psychologist Carl Jung taught that “Until the unconscious is made conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Tarot helps us find exactly that kind of insight.

It’s not my intention to equate Tarot readings with qualified clinical therapy, or a cure for any sort of mental health issue. It is, however, a great tool for stress management and personal growth for a healthy individual. I say that based on hundreds of readings over the course of twenty years of doing public professional Tarot readings and thirty years of using Tarot for myself. Time and time and time over again I would see people relax as a reading progressed. As we talked about new ideas, explored possibilities and validated their own intuitive hunches, shoulders would go down, foreheads would smooth. As readings go on, people would sit back in their chairs and the tone of their voice would soften. The easing of emotional tension was obvious, even to someone with no formal psychology or body language training.

Tarot works by helping us all own our emotions, understand our situations and create a more reasoned way forward.

Tarot doesn’t predict our fate, it frees us from it.

The Day Shift and the Moon

The energy path for the week unfolds.

The three cards for this week in Monday’s Energy Path reading were:

  • Fading Energy: Three of Pentacles
  • Current Energy: Five of Cups
  • Growing Energy: The Moon

I had the bright idea that we’d revisit the growing energy on Fridays to see if and how the week’s energies have unfolded compared to the reading.

Today seems to be a better day for that look back. It feels like this set of cards is right on target reading the week. I get no sense of the Three of Pentacles at all. The Five of Cups is in full force today, but the energy overall feels on the precipice of a gentle shift.

Here is what we talked about a few days ago:

Growing energy: The Moon. The Moon Tarot card is about intuition, psychic ability, spiritual journeying and all of that, true enough, but this time it is pointing more toward energy of natural cycles. The moon is tied to the cycles of the tides. The moon has the obvious phases plus it’s yearly drift from being at its farthest from Earth (apogee) and being a bit closer (perigee). The moon is cycles within cycles, gradual drifts and shifts. This month is a close-orbit time of year, what people have started calling a “supermoon.” All of this points to the cyclic energy. All the stagnation energy from the past several weeks might begin to move, albeit calmly and slowly. Let it take its own pace for the best outcome. You can’t make the tide rise any faster than it does. Let your energy level and emotional levels take their own natural pace, too. Things will cycle through, be patient.

Before we get to the Moon’s energy, we have today and the Five of Cups.The best way I can think of to describe today’s energy is “slack tide.” There is a point in time during every tide cycle where the water is still. The tide has hit its highest or lowest point for that cycle, and is still for a moment before it turns to flow in the opposite direction. Today is that point of stillness.

The Five of Cups has a feeling of melancholy and remembrance.

I am reminded of several of the mental images that have come with collective energy readings over the past few years, largely to do with the Covid pandemic and political turbulence in the the U.S. They were images dealing with impending storms and the aftermath.

Healing is never sudden nor does it march along in a straight line. There are cycles within it. There are steps back with the steps forward. There are times of looking back and looking around, remembering, acknowledging and honoring to go along with bittersweet times of moving forward.

There is a sense of anticipation, of movement, of that first step forward after a time of taking a step back.

I am reminded of the line in the song “Cloudbusting” that “something good is going to happen.”

Key word here, today, is “going.” This might not be the time quite yet. For now, allow your feelings whatever they are. Be in your moment, whatever it is. The cycles will turn soon enough.

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Odin’s Day Oracle

Oracle Card for Wodensday

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This post is inspired by three of my many favorite things: Alliteration, the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck and the book American Gods by Neil Gaimon

In the book, “Mr. Wednesday” is, or at least is a reference to, Odin (also spelled Woden) for whom Wednesday is named. If I’m not posting some sort of “learn with me” post on Wednesdays, I thought it might be a good time to look at oracle cards (which you read the exact same way as you read RWS Tarot or any cards) or other oracle / guidance tool like pendulums or charm casting, or I Ching or bibliomancy or any of the other untold number of such techniques. In other words, Wednesdays and Fridays are pretty wide open. Mondays are earmarked for the energy week ahead readings. Thor…Thursdays get the newsletter. If weekends get any blogging at all, it will be over on Sage’s Other Words on who-knows-what topic.

Seriously, it could be anything. I hope you’ll follow both blogs, but I’m always grateful for anything you read here or there. I’m also grateful for any likes or shares you can spare. Nothing I do online is monetized and all of this free content depends on your private reading orders, memberships and virtual coffees over on Ko-fi.

Now, back to the card with the name I have no earthly idea how to pronounce. I’m going with the name in the guide book “King of Flint.”

When I saw the art by Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapantli. My impression was immediately “The Power of Myth” … also a favorite book.

The primary influence for the image is clearly mesoamerican, but also feels like it has elements of a Medieval knight in armour and a classic Samurai. Warriors are warriors I suppose.

The energy I’m getting feels disconnected from the meanings described in the guidebook about winter, snow, justice, judgement, swift and emotionless execution. In addition to being an amalgam of cultures, the card feels like an amalgam of Judgement, Justice, plus the King and Queen of Swords from the classic Tarot deck.

The energy I sense is more like a Shaolin Monk. Combat-able, certainly but guided by something much more spiritual and abstract.

And I do mean spiritual, not…not…never…in no respect, religious. This is not about that faith without works trope because faith is the farthest thing in the world from this energy. This is in no way about “faith” in anything that originated externally.

This is about a deep and abiding trust in one’s internal spiritual and philosophical compass. This is about trusting your inner knowing and claiming your power in a big way without emotion getting too much in the way.

The myth, the outer cues are inspiration.

The power, however, is in your hands.

Myth has power because it can inspire action.

Warriors act, but they act wisely and with a great deal of self control.

“A [warrior] fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him” – G.K. Chesterson

Alleyman’s Tarot Deck by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission, Publishing Goblin LLC