Sage Snow – Page 29 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Zombie Cat’s Short Summer Shamble ’22

Zombie Cat is shambling through again this summer with yes or no Tarot answers for you.

Zombie Cats don’t move quickly.

This one shuffles through each summer since he popped up out the confluence of ideas that was a Schrodinger’s Cat YouTube explainer and a 2015 Menage A Tarot podcast episode. I’ll put up the original “Meet Zombie Cat” blog post on Thursday if you are interested.

I’m incapable of mentioning Menage A Tarot podcast without saying how grateful I am to David S. Dear, voice actor extraordinaire, for bringing me in on the project back in the 2015 Modern Oracle days. I love his current podcast project, Ninth World Journal on Spotify and Kate continues to rock out loud over at Daily-Tarot-Girl dot com. I’ll put links below & in the episode description so you can check out their awesomeness for yourself.

But yeah – Zombie Cat

I’ve spent a LOT of time talking about movie-style predictions and predicting the future with Tarot and how it doesn’t really work and how its not all that useful anyway. Some people just aren’t in a good head space for that. High minded spiritual growth and personal development really is important, and all of that has its place, but sometimes you just want some short, sweet, kick-in-the-pants guidance.

Even though promises of “100% accuracy” a sure sign of a scam in my opinion, sometimes a little “wtf just do a prediction” can get to your intuition in ways thoughtful, careful “listening to your inner wisdom and higher self” can’t. Especially if you go into it knowing any little thing could change the prediction in a heartbeat. Cause and effect really is a thing, you know.

If you come over to the blog post, you’ll see a video of the last few seconds of a yes or no layout. I didn’t have a particular question in mind when I filmed the cards. I really just intended to demonstrate a little of what the yes or no layout process is (I’ll talk about that part tomorrow)

But me being me and me being Zombie Cat (over the years he’s become a fictional character zero flocks to give outlet for the Tony Stark wannabe side part of my personality) we can’t leave it at just a yes or a no. Oh no. No no.

It starts with an age-old yes/no card dealing pattern of who knows what origin.

Then I change the interpretation of the final three cards to align with the yin yang way three coins are interpreted in the Taoist related classic I Ching…which itself has been used for fortune telling for (no-joke) … millenia. The I ching is believed to have been written around 400 to 800 something ish BC in China. But that is also a topic for another day.

Just for fun, think of a question. Make it one that CAN be answered with a yes or with a no. If you are reading the blog, scroll back up to the video to get your test-case answer (If you want a real reading of your individual question, zombie cat readings are available by email, no appointment needed HERE on the blog website and in the ko-fi shop)

In all of these Zombie Cat readings, after we get the flat yes/no answer, I go through card by card with a few intuitive ideas to consider in addition to the yes no. If you don’t like the yes or no that you got, the cards might hint at ways you can nudge things in a different direction. If you like your answer, the cards might give you hints about how you can strengthen the path you are on.

In the video example we see the final cards are the four of swords, the queen of swords and the ace of pentacles. When you get just one ace, I read that as a flat no.

Four of swords asks you to think about where you need to rest and think. Is being overextended, exhausted, or inattentive part of the reason your answer is no? If you wanted a yes maybe a little rest and contemplation, a mental review of the details will show you a different path than the one you are on. If you like the no, is risking fatigue and inattention worth it to keep it that way?

The queen of swords asks you to think about where you are giving away your power. What are you ceeding to other people that makes this a no? If you like the no, what control are you willing to give to keep things going this way?

The Ace of Pentacles points to cost. What does the no cost you? What practical things can you change or do in order to change or keep your “no”?

This is all very vague and general because this is just a vague and general-audience example reading. It is pretty much the Tarot equivalent of wet spaghetti we’re throwing at the blog and pod walls to see what sticks in the hope that it is helpful to somebody somewhere.

Please come back tomorrow for another yes/no example and Thursday for the Zombie Cat post that started this whole thing.

Thank you for listening! See you at the next sip!

David S. Dear, voice actor, podcaster

Daily-Tarot-Girl (Kate)

Menage A Tarot podcast on TuneIn

Rain

If you want to catch lighting in a bottle you have to stand in the rain.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is Lightning in a Bottle, one of the expansion pack cards created for the Alleyman’s Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund. It’s one of two lightning in a bottle cards. It is interesting to compare the two. You can see the other in the April 2022 blog post “The Makings of Magic” The other card is more ethereal while this one has almost a steampunk, industrial feel. The other card emphasizes the luck aspect of success, this one emphasizes the action part of it.

This card is akin to the famous Thomas Edison quote that “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” Anything is possible but not everything is remotely probable. Tarot is a little like that. It doesn’t predict – it inspires us with the possibility and guides us with practical probabilities, but never exact certainties. You can’t predict exactly where lightning will strike. But you can read the weather report to see where the rain will be.

According to the national weather service, lightning can strike 10 miles or a little more away from a storm. So sure, it’s theoretically possible to be hit by a bolt of lightning while you are sitting in your back yard on a sunny afternoon, but it is far more likely to happen if you climb a tall tree in the middle of a thunderstorm.

If we think of this metaphoric lightning as creative inspiration, you can just sit around waiting for an idea to hit. Especially if just sitting around is part of your personal creative process. But that’s the trick isn’t it? That’s the climbing a tree in the rain part. That’s the perspiration part. It isn’t the sitting around in and of itself that sparks the genius. It comes from knowing what inspires you. It comes from thinking about and understanding your creative process, whatever your creative process might be. When you know yourself and know your process then you can put yourself in circumstances where the lighting will find you instead of you constantly chasing it.

So now you have your spark in a jug. What are you going to do about it? Anything? Or is just knowing you captured it enough?

It might be. Happy is the person who defines success in their own terms and achieves that instead of striving for other people’s expectations.

But let’s suppose that your success includes other people. What if you want to show or share the lightning? That’s when the work starts. That’s when climbing out of our imaginary tree and doing something with the bottle comes into play. This is the part of the process where the makers are going to make and Thomas Edison starts to sweat.

It takes work to do anything else but sit in a tree with your lighting bottle. If abiding with your lighting bottle what you want and need, by all means do that. There is a great deal of light and satisfaction in doing that and it is 1,000 percent enough. In this scenario, I think of the lightning bolt as being a metaphor for Zen style enlightenment. It is for you alone. It is for you to take home, make a part of your life, and let it light your way from now on.

If the lightning represents creative inspiration, then there might be more that needs done, a different tree to climb so to speak. Catching the idea is the first stroke of luck, making it exist in physical reality is another tree climb. If the thing you create is popular with other people, then that becomes another lucky lightning strike altogether.

Both bolts require us to spend time out in the rain.

Thank you so much for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always appreciated!

Neither the blog nor the podcast are monetized so your Tarot message comes first, not the advertisers. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi (link in the episode description.) The memberships, commissions, shop and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique, (almost) daily Tarot content.

Want more than a sip? Get a full cup with private Tarot readings with Sage by email. Order HERE 24/7 no appointment needed

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Tarot Turnover: The Nitty Gritty

Hello! I’m glad you are here.

I start my day with coffee and contemplation. It’s not as Zen spiritual as you might think. It definitely has more of a Sheriff Hopper (from the Stranger Things series) and doom scroll until the static from just waking up clears kind of vibe.

Was taking my morning scroll when I came across a Instagram post about some minor detail about the hand of the figure in the 10 of swords being in the same position as the Hierophant card and how that was the reference to the assassination of some historical pope or another or something. My response was bah…too pedantic…and kept rolling.

While the Pope seems like a nice enough little grampa guy these days, Papal history is not something that typically flies on my radar, but the post and the notion of hand detail sunk through the static enough to make a couple of points.

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Introvert hard

The Four of Swords gives us permission for a little self care – or to introvert hard.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card if the four of swords.

The 1909 public domain Waite Smith card is pictured in the blog because following this advice was well underway when I sat down to write this. It’s been one of those days for about a few weeks now.

It’s been yang, so now it’s time to be yin. What goes up must come down. When you push the envelope, you have to haul it back in.

Or to paraphrase somebody on Twitter, if you’re down, stay down there for a minute, look around and recover. You just might find those keys you lost under the sofa last week.

In the Pamela Smith card, the reclined figure has their palm pressed together. Like any good sage or mirror, this reflects whatever we the viewer project onto it. Some might see it at prayerful, but it strikes me as more thought full, with a “things that make you go hmmm” vibe.

Here I am reminded of Benedict Cumberbatches portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, and the similar hand gesture he made when Sherlock entered his “mind palace” memory technique.

Folded hands can hint at outward directed thinking at a diety, or it can be deep inward contemplation, but either way the body rests and the mind is slowed. Either way it fits the four of swords card at least in today’s energy context.

Do you bristle at catchphrases and platitudes about this sort of thing, like rest, self-care or nurturing your inner cranky child who really really needs a nap right now? If you want something that feels a little more gritty & persistent with a can-do attitude, try this: introvert HARD for a little while. Think of napping as an endurance sport. Pretend that finding an excuse to stay in and give yourself a break as a mental acuity exercise. Who says finding and wearing your comfiest clothes isn’t making an extreme fashion statement?

The four of swords and I both wish you a great weekend. Get some rest – or if you prefer, introvert HARD.

Thanks for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, follows I’ll see you at the next sip!

Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships, commissions and virtual coffees all support the cost to create this unique, non-monetized, (almost) daily Tarot content.

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Roll up your queenly sleeves

Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip, Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Queen of Pentacles. Today the card is bringing the earth element energy just shy of the major arcana Empress card. The card screams practical. It’s a refreshing change from the angst, the sense of warning from the US holiday events. The queen of pentacles is offering a refuge of sorts.

The video above (in the blog) features the Heart of Stars Tarot deck 3rd edition with original art by Thom Pham. I love this deck both for its color palette and the pop culture, movie and TV references that Mr. Pham uses in his images. My intuition has always peppered readings with those kinds of references. Movies, TV, and music is, in many ways, the psychic message to plain language Rosetta Stone. If we’ve both seen the same movie or heard the same song, it lets me communicate a great deal of nonverbal information to you. Mood and aesthetics unspool over time the first time you see the movie or hear the song, but can become a condensed, shorthand way to communicate that mood and aesthetic to you later in a reading.

Today is a good example. The card brought a crate full of reference. More than direct meaning, actually.

The old nike ad, saying “just do it”

The ladies from an old BBC show “How Clean is Your House” saying “tuck in”

The Zen proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

Surfrider ads and plastic free July ads on social media.

How-to mend and repair videos on YouTube.

And, of course, Will Smith’s song “Get Jiggy With It” for the active feel of it, not any double entendre with the lyrics.

Today is a big “reduce, reuse, recycle” energy. Find creative solutions. Fix things rather than replace them. Think. Act. Engage with life actively and tangibly. It feeds your soul and conserves resources both at the same time.

Today is a day for our inner bohemian hippie. For some of us, every day is earth day. If that isn’t your style, do one small tiny thing today that is as green as you can manage. I’d say recycle, but you should be doing that all the time. Maybe repair something, grow something from the food seeds you usually toss, buy a plastic-free option the next time you replace a thing.

Interesting. Maybe it’s from the article about microplastics that I read recently, or the Surf Rider ad reference, but I get the mental impression of aqua blue, upcycled ocean plastic products, ocean or beach scented blue jar candles, and that salt spray smell when there is a breeze at the beach, one of my personal favorite experiences. One good beach day is enough to make anyone want to protect the environment.

It’s a good day to take a break from the big feels lately, roll up your queenly sleeves, and tuck in to it. Repair. Reuse. Upcycle. Recycle. Do it with royal style, but do it.

Thank you so much for listening! I really appreciate any likes, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare.

If you would like more than a sip of Tarot, full size email Tarot readings are available on the blog website. Please also visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees all support this non-monetized blog and podcast.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Easiest Wound to Heal

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Three of Swords: the easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens

Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Good news! The turbulent energy from the past few weeks has settles just the tiniest bit, just in time to draw…

The three of swords.

Hoo boy. It never stops, does it? On the other hand stopping isn’t good either. Change and turbulence, peace and calm are all different facets of the same big gemstone we call life and any day above ground, as they say, is a good one. With life comes change. With life comes risk. With life comes all sorts of fears and feels.

Classically, the three of swords is a pretty dire looking card. The image of a pierced heart. It is a card of hurt and heartbreak.

It is a reminder to guard your heart. The easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens. Healthy boundaries is key, emphasis on the healthy. Prickly, guarded, disconnected and unapproachable is no better way to live than being an unappreciated doormat. The middle way is, once again, best.

Not to go all Nancy Reagan on it -ewww- but it is ok to just say no. Know your limits. It’s important that those limits aren’t crossed by other people, but it is important that you don’t stomp on them either. That is an easy part to forget in a world of social media and normalized extreme oversharing.

It doesn’t matter so much if the potential harm is from the outside or accidentally self-inflicted, but good old Ben Franklin nailed it again. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens. Mind your boundaries both incoming and outgoing.

Healthy boundaries means keeping the right things out, but it also means allowing the right things in. Sometimes the harm is in the lack. Without the challenge of exercise, bodies become weak. The over-sheltered plant dies from lack of sun and water. Saying yes is as important as saying no. The three of swords is also a reminder to mind your boundaries to make sure they aren’t over guarded causing you to live, act, intend and energize from a place of fear.

Cue Yoda and that thing about fear and anger leading to the dark side.

Ben Franklin and Yoda. Those two will get us through just about anything don’t you think?

Thanks for reading and listening! Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always appreciated.

Please support this non-monetized blog and podcast on the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships, commissions and virtual coffees all contribute to the web hosting and other costs to create this free to access, (almost) daily Tarot content.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

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The not-joking joker

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Usually Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. You might want to pour yourself a full mug for this one. Possibly a full mug of something stronger than coffee. Or maybe not. I don’t know – let’s jump in and see where this takes us.

This is the joker card from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. The thing I love about exploring this outsized deck with you is the way it pushes me to the edge of my comfort zone. It also lets me interact with cards, decks and art I wouldn’t have otherwise.. This card is a little bit of both of those things.

As always, I read the card as-is before looking at the deck creators intentions and was rewarded for that pattern with this card. Intuitive reading is the whole intended point of the card which was originally drawn by Christian Ellingstad for the Arcadia playing cards. All of the cards in the Alleyman’s Tarot were either created by its author, created specifically for the deck, or used with direct permission. The author in me respects the work it took to make that level of permission and scholarship happen.

Here, the Joker card and its lovely line drawing pulls in two directions. The lighter, easier of the two talks about cartomancy. Technically, cartomancy means divination or an intuitive reading with any cards. Lenormand Tarot, Marseille style Tarot, oracle decks, playing cards – reading with all of those fall under the term cartomancy. You could use old maid cards if you really wanted to. Just as often, if not more so, when you hear the word cartomancy, it usually refers to using playing cards for the reading.

How do you do that, you might ask? The coffee mug isn’t big enough for that this morning. More on that some other day.

Long story short, readings with playing cards are at the same time the easiest and the hardest readings you can do. There are no details or complicated symbolism on playing cards. There isn’t much to memorize, so playing cards are a good way to start learning cartomancy in its largest sense.

Which is precisely why playing cards are the most difficult to use. There aren’t established meanings. There aren’t a lot of details or images for your intuition to use as fuel to find the right message. You have to read playing cards intuitively or you are screwed. Unless you add a big dose of pure intuition, playing cards are only good for playing games. But, on the other hand, if you are willing to take that chance and make the leap into intuitive reading, then playing cards are as good as any other deck for finding the insight and guidance you need.

OK, great. But what else is the Joker telling us about today?

After working with the Alleyman’s deck, I’m starting to take reversals more seriously. But even if we stick with my usual practice of deciding with pure intuition whether a reversal is indicating a slowing or blockage of energy or just happenstance, my hunch today is this card rightfully should stay upside down. So much so that this is in the old-school flip the meaning territory, which is rare in my experience.

This joker is serious.

Period. Underline. Exclamation point.

Ok, fine. But what is this joker so serious about?

I live in America. I’ll let you decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing because after the past 6 or 7 years, I’m honestly of two minds about it. Especially after the past couple of weeks.

99.999% of the time I avoid religion and politics in readings. My job is to try to bring clarity, not stir up muck. Despite that deliberate effort, sometimes intuition steps in, yoinks the good intentions right out of your hands and spits the real talk. Most of the time if it comes up, it is encouragement to get literally involved in civics; volunteer at an animal shelter, plant trees, that sort of thing. There is more to it this time. Full on politics has come crashing into a pretty little playing card.

After 4 July 2022 I can only see an inverted Joker one way: This is serious.

What the actual freaking fuckitty frack was that yesterday, America?

To the rest of the world, all I can say is – I’m sorry. I did all I had the means to do. I voted, yard signed, contributed – at one point I even volunteered and phone banked – which sucked – for a candidate who, luckily, did not suck. Yet here we are, screaming down the highway to theocracy and oligarchy and a bunch of other -archys and -isms that are – um – bad.

Democracy is in danger. Look at yesterday as if it were a Tarot reading. Consider the implications and symbolism if you drew a card that was an assault rifle slaughter of innocents at an Independence Day celebration. I’m at a loss for words. On top of the death, horror and tragedy you have a literal representation of democracy and decency under fire.

Maybe it was the movie JFK, but the phrase “kill box” keeps coming to mind. And, too, there was just an interview with Andrea Mitchell and a retired agent who worked in Dallas at one point in his career. He spoke about the paralles between the Highland Park shooting and Lee Harvey Oswald. I encourage you to listen to reliable news reporting and get the information directly for yourself. I’m not a journalist. It’s my job to stand here and point to the symbolism of it all.

This is serious.

I am worried for all religious and spiritual minorities (atheist, agnostic and secular included) as well as our LGBTQIA and our POC brothers and sisters.

This joker is not joking. All good and decent people have to band and act together, including voting this fall in hordes and droves. We have to make the polls look like that scene from the movie World War Z.

Meanwhile. Stay safe, be careful. Protect your privacy. Protest smart. Be aware of your surroundings in both cyberspace and meatspace. You are precious. We need you.

Thank you for reading and listening. Short Sip will be back tomorrow, hopefully with a little better mood for you. Take good care of yourself.

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It’s Own Magic

If everything changes in time, doesn’t that mean time is magic?

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the Magician. It’s nice to see some major arcana cards showing up lately. That in itself is a nice little validation for me, that some of the energy and effort that I’ve been investing into refreshing the website and migrating the shop to a different platform in an effort to keep prices down on readings just might pay off.

It’s also an interesting compliment to the summer energy that’s out there. As a whole, the major arcana has so called “higher energy” That’s kind of a confusing way to say it. Sometimes higher vs lower energy is used qualitatively. Higher connotes something more esoteric, more spiritual, somehow “good” or virtuous while lower is sometimes used to connote something more banal and mundane, perhaps lesser quality or even malicious.

When I think of major arcana cards as having higher energy, it is a quantitative thing. Electromagnetic waves that have more cycles per unit of distance are said to have higher frequencies. There are just plain more waves in the wavelength not that they are any better or worse – unless of course you are talking about radiation and living tissue but that’s another story that we’ll ignore for now, since we are talking about Tarot card symbolism, not hard science & physics.

What I’m trying to say is that major arcana cards aren’t any better or any worse than the minor arcana. There is a surprising amount of overlap between some minor arcana cards and the majors. The minor cards have a gentler touch with the advice. They hand you a cookie and tell you that by the time you are done it will all be right as rain. Major arcana cards are more ka-pow. They are Oda Mae looking you straight in the eye and telling you that you in danger, girl.

I’ve been told by my Lenormand Tarot reading friends that the whole Lenormand deck is a little like that, all no holds barred frying pan to the face type stuff. It’s on my list of stuff to check out, but I have some other oracle exploration to get out of my system first. I’ll tell you more about that when it’s closer to ready for cyberspace.

Meanwhile, back at the Magician, this is fairly blunt. It reminds me of those internet memes from around the time when the movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” was released where Wong would portal in, throw down some random weird statement and portal back out again. Today’s card is a little like that. There aren’t any circles here. No sneaking up and nabbing the point from behind like with the Turn Around or Tools of the Inner Trade post / episodes.

The Magician card symbolizes transformation as much as it does manifestation. The only difference between life and magic is our preconceived expectations. The flow of time and life change and transform everything. If you are still alive, you are still magic.

Thank you for reading and listening! Any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare are always appreciated. Comments are open on the blog, which podcast listeners can reach through the link in the show description.

Just a reminder that the blog, podcast and socials will be on a short summer hiatus July first to July sixth. Email readings are open on the blog website throughout that time. So is the ko-fi page where memberships, the shop, commissions and virtual coffees all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. The blog and podcast are not monetized. That let’s me serve up a sip of spirit message without the taste of corporate messaging.

Thank you so so much! See you at the next sip.