Chaz Hutton draws Outlined here on Substack. One of my favorite follows here, he created the perfect visual for this time of year – a calendar page where the last two weeks of December are a bunch of wavy lines.
Beth Owl’ Daughter wrote a lovely piece about the halcyon days of Yuletide HERE.
Both things capture the blurry, soft-focus energy this time of year. I think it is stronger this year, because 2023 needs it. It’s been a heckuva 4-8 years and we all could probably use a little cocoon time during the dark time and down time with a cup of coffee and a good book, or a nap on a grey and cloudy afternoon or a cup of eggnog or all of the above.
That dark, quiet sort of energy is beneficial in the context of the larger, chaotic stressful energies that have dominated the past several years. It is a much needed yin time in the furious roar of recent yang times.
Today’s card, the nine of swords, gives us a heads up to the pitfalls of this kind of down time. Blurry time can slip in to despair time.
That isn’t to minimize the very real issues of post traumatic stress, depression or healing from any sort of emotional trauma.
This is a reminder for the more fortunate of us to don’t drama.
The real ghosts of emotional healing and loneliness are bad enough without adding imagined drama on top of it all.
So do care for yourself and your loved ones. Do sit with your emotions and honor them. Don’t make drama. Let unnecessary details go. Focus on the things that speak to your heart, not to habits, traditions or other people’s expectations.
Smaller than usual holiday celebrations are good, memorable ones too. Sometimes the best things come in the littlest packages.
Learning Tarot is a process, and part of that process is repetition.
Last time we looked at Lenormand cards, we started to explore two card combinations, which seem to be a big part of the Lenormand style of Tarot reading. Often when particular combinations of cards are seen, the meanings for the cards change a bit, not unlike a reversal in RWS style cards and readings.
The best way to understand that connection seems to be two card sets. It makes sense to understand the foundation, the building blocks of a larger layout before using a larger layout. In RWS style, that foundational building block is the single card reading, which plugs into the individual positions of any layout which is then woven together in a meta-analytical, intuition driven way. I’m still learning Lenormand along with you, but it seems to me that building block isn’t single cards, but the underlying connections between 2 or 3 cards, like a flat mat with dots (single card meanings) stuck on top.
To put it in arts and crafts terms, RWS is knitting while Lenormand is paper-making with speckles on top.
Today we have snake and fish.
So starting with that foundational fabric, what is the common energy matrix behind the Flow and suppleness are common traits between the two.
The fish are associated with prosperity. The snake in the guidebook is associated with typical western cultural meanings like deceit and deviousness. Intuitively, however, I am reminded of Chinese astrology. People born in the year of the snake are said to be competent, wise, intuitive and passionate. When I put all of those aspects together the two-together message is to protect your resources through wisdom and know-how (akin to a four of pentacles combined with an ace of swords sort of vibe)
I’m not sure if or how the playing card insets factor into it. Queen of clubs with the snake is akin to the queen of wands – which reinforces the idea of self-care, in the form of caring for physical resources. The king of diamonds is like the king of pentacles, reinforcing the notion that this is about common sense, physical realm money management more than some sort of grand spiritual lesson.
Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes, as these cards seem to stay, you just have to mind the budget, even at the holidays. The energy here is all about practical, level headed things, unrelated to spirituality or emotion. Once we make the physical stable and safe, then we can turn our minds and hearts to the spiritual, emotional and intangible.
Between now and New Year I don’t intend to hold to any particular schedule other than doing email private readings as they come in.
Usually I try to do the Learn With Me on Wednesdays and the Substack newsletter as a weekly digest on the weekend, with one card posts as often as I can manage on weekdays.
I’m still of two minds about the “path through the week” thing on Mondays.
What do you think? What kind of readings or posts would you like to see in the blog? For goodness’ sake don’t be shy. As long as it isn’t spam, by all means post your questions or suggestions in the comments. Contact info is in the right hand column (or bottom of the page on mobile) too.
I’m planning to do a bunch of re-introductory and behind the scenes posts over the next few weeks sliding in and around day job, private readings and the holidays.
The elves are busy, but not panicked. The squirrels are taking it easy – kicking back munching nuts and drinking spiked eggnog, apparently. I’m going to take the opportunity to spend some quality time with the fam, the kitchen, the knitting needles and an actual library book.
I can slide an email Tarot reading into that scenario pretty easily. Email readings are my happy place, my specialty, my niche and my strong suit in the world of Tarot. Come in to that coziness and read a reading. No appointment needed for this kind of Tarot – order anytime HERE.
I’m @sagewordstarot on Threads, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr and TikTok. Threads and Instagram are my favorites, so if you want to say hi that’s the best social media place to find me and have actual conversation. The socials might be sporadically quiet, but stay tuned here on the main blog. I have some new posts planned for the blurry-time between now and New Year.
Next up, however, is a Learn With Me: Lenormand tomorrow. See you then!
Party Tarot is pretty much closed for good except for very local, case by case special appearances. In-person individual readings and live online readings are closed until January 2024. In person will resume in January and be available by appointment on Mondays. Live online/phone readings return in January by appointment.
E-mail Tarot is ALWAYS OPEN. Order anytime 24/7. Delivery times are usually within 24 hours but may vary if you place your order nights, weekends or holidays (US eastern time)
Learn tarot and intuition with moon card and fish card from the lenormand deck.
I don’t think this works quite the way the guidebook says.
I could be wrong, so let’s stick with two card readings for a while and see what turns up.
With the Lenormand deck, a “tableau” reading puts the cards on the table in a simple grid, with the “Grand Tableau” using the entire 36 card deck.
I’ve used the classic 10 card Celtic Cross layout and one of the first layouts I learned was the 9 card in Sam & Carson’s Medicine Cards. It was interesting to compare those two. Even years into reading experience 9 cards was a tipping point for me. 9 was a lot, but it was a perfectly serviceable layout with plenty of detail, but it was a heavy lift at times to work through it, even later with plenty of reading experience behind me. As soon as I would use a 10 card cross, the energy would get knotty, and contradictory and verge on nonsense. Double digits seems to be a tipping point. Rather than perpetually dancing on the edge of spilling the beans, I wrote the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle and TaoCraft layouts that I’ve used for private readings from the beginning.
All along the time that we’ve been looking at individual Lenormand cards, the guide book has mentioned how pairings and connections with other cards could modify the individual card’s meaning. We saw energetic connections and flow in the three card reading we did last time, but it was more of a flow of meaning, like making a sentence rather than changing meanings through the series of cards.
It might be interesting to do some two card sets to see if any of those specifically meaning-modifying connections emerge.
In this case, the guide book doesn’t give a modification for either the moon card or the fish card relative to the other. I get the flow, sentence like connection again. The water connections to both cards gives the sense of intuition and flow as being the main message with the fish’s association with prosperity taking a little bit of a back seat to the mental image of actual fish swimming and in motion.
I get no sense of energy at all from the playing card insets, so will let that sit for now. Follow your own instincts if you think they are meaningful. Research the 8 of cups or King of Pentacles if either of those grab your attention.
My hunch is to keep up with the two card sets for a little while. Water, tides, depth all are associated with the images here. In RWS tarot deep water has to do with mystery, deep knowing. My hunch is that there is something here that hasn’t quite shown itself yet.
Let’s abide with it, and see what else two card sets have to say.
See you at the next sip!
Winter Hours: All of them!
While in-person sessions are closed for the holidays, email private readings are OPEN to order 24/7, no appointment needed. Most orders arrive in your inbox within 24 hours.
Delivery times may vary in December depending on the Elfcon status.
Knitting together last week’s posts about imagination and accurate Tarot predictions.
I like to knit.
Sometimes that means making stuff out of yarn.
Sometimes it means weaving together disparate ideas in a Tarot reading. Or a Tarot blog post.
I’m doing both lately. It’s that Elfcon 5 gift making time of year, but I’d also like to knit together the past couple of blog posts. We’ve looked at a couple of narrow topics, now lets connect them back into the grand scheme of things a little bit.
The grand scheme is how Tarot and intuition actually works – at least the way I go about it.
My readings do not predict the future. So that kind of “accuracy” doesn’t factor into things even if it were possible, which it isn’t for all of those cause and effect sort of Heisenberg uncertainty-ish sort of reasons. In this case “accurate” means “it contains some sort of useful insight or idea.”
Can we get insight or inspiration from Tarot and imagination? Yes – absolutely. It’s about the most human thing I can think of to do.
Let’s go back to our imagination as intuition example – think of an elephant taking a shower.
When I first learned this concept in an email conversation with Chris Fleming, my first thought was a Babar-like, highly antropomorphized cartoon elephant in a cartoon human shower with a big white towel wrapped around it’s waist a la movie men’s locker room.
Was this a prediction? No, of course not. Was it accurate? Yes – it was whimsical and playful at a time in life where I needed a reminder to be more playful and find more humor in life.
In response to last week’s post, a client said she visualized a real life elephant being lovingly cleaned by an attentive caretaker and seeming to enjoy the experience.
Like a Tarot card in the context of a layout, this image in the context of the person who saw it is a beautiful message from and for a beautiful person.
This person is a natural caretaker in a care taking profession. Her visualization is a tremendous validation that she is on the right path in her work, and even if they don’t say it her clients appreciate her as much as her imaginary elephant was enjoying its shower.
It is also the classic reminder for caretakers to allow themselves to be cared for or at least give themselves a little TLC. It could be a reminder to let yourself be that happy elephant.
These aren’t “accurate predictions” relative to physical events. To make Tarot or psychic readings into that is to strip it of all its depth, emotion, beauty and humanity. Making Tarot and psychic readings about predictions is like taking a living breathing elephant and turning it into a two dimensional rubber stamp shadow image of an elephant.
Imagination is our window to intuition. Tarot is the battery sparks intuition. Together, they let us see marvelous things far beyond physical predictions.
Are you ready for something more advanced than pool ball toy predictions? Are you ready to glimpse the ideas that help you create your future rather than (maybe) predict it? Tarot doesn’t tell you what will happen in life, it helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
I want to take a little break from exploring the Lenormand Tarot deck and talk about something that has been on my mind since a conversation with a potential client yesterday. We’ve talked about it before (don’t forget you can use the search bar to browse the 1500+ posts in the archive) but it’s time to revisit the idea of accuracy in Tarot.
As I see it, accuracy in psychic or Tarot readings begs the question “Accurate compared to what?”
Accuracy of anything is a measurement of that thing compared to some desired goal. Accuracy measures how on-target something is.
To measure anything, you have to make a comparison of one thing that you don’t know with something you do know, like a ruler. Even if one of the things you are using to measure is your eyeballing estimation based on experience – it’s still a comparison.
So what do you use as your ruler to measure the accuracy of a Tarot reading?
Is your measure predicting the future?
I can tell you that level of accuracy right now – zero.
If a Tarot reading tells you what actually happens ahead of time it is one of two things:
Self-fulfilling prophecy – Cause and effect is a real thing. If you choose to DO something based on the reading, that action contributes to the end outcome. In this case, the reading caused the future, it didn’t predict it. Which is a good thing! That means you can use a Tarot reading to help you decide your best course of action. You can use a Tarot reading to help cause (or at least contribute to) the desired effect. The drawback here is that you don’t have control over everything. You can increase the chances of something happening, but you can’t 100% control everything and you certainly can’t 100% predict anything.
Pure dumb luck. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
Is your measure getting good advice?
If that is the case, then there is a very high degree of accuracy, and it happens without regard for distance or delivery method (more on that tomorrow)
Is your measure stress reduction?
With that measure, Tarot has 100% accuracy.
People come to Tarot readings for a reason. There are as many reasons to get a Tarot reading as there are people and moments along their life’s journey.
A Tarot reading is a peaceful moment. A Tarot reading is a moment of hopefulness and optimism. A Tarot reading is a moment of calm, clarity and the hope of finding a solution.
If guidance, advice, and a peaceful moment is your measure, then my Tarot readings are as accurate as they come.
Want to learn to do DIY one card meditation readings to find a peaceful moment whenever you need it?
Imagination speaks many languages, and goes by many names. So does intuition. You could say they are twins.
Imagination is the portal to your intuition. Intuition enters our consciousness through the doorway of our imagination.
Imagine something. Imagine anything. Conjure up anything – a sight, a sound, a memory – anything. Psychic Chris Fleming uses the example of an elephant in a shower when he teaches about psychic ability and intuition. Let’s use that as an example. We had an email conversation once a long time ago. He said I could use his teaching point if I gave him credit. So here we go.
Imagine an elephant taking a shower.
Now what form does your imagination take? Is it a realistic elephant in a river spraying water on itself through its trunk? Or is it a cartoon elephant standing on two legs in a human shower and a gigantic towel wrapped around its waist? Is it a memory of watching Dumbo as a child? Or is it music that reminds you of elephants in a circus? (or my favorite, the song by Tame Impala)
Imagination is telling. By letting our daydreams and earworms flow, the intuitive answers you want just might come along for the ride.
Ace cards carry the essence of the suit. Today, the ace is carrying the water element association for cups, which is symbolic of intuition and deep spiritual wisdom (why, some say, the King, Queen and Page of Cups are typically portrayed near oceans. Deep water = deep wisdom & deep insights.
Most of all water flows. Let the imagination happen.
Thanks for reading! Next up, more Learning and Lenormand! See you at the next sip.
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund all rights reserved, used with permission.
Distance Tarot is my favorite Tarot to do, so that is my focus for the winter and beyond.
It’s my specialty. Written distance Tarot gives you the best of my 30 years of Tarot reading experience.
Writing gives me richer, deeper access to my intuition than speaking does. Why? I have no idea. All I know is that it works and written distance Tarot accesses the best parts of my psychic ability.
Don’t get me wrong. After all these years, my spoken, in-person readings are good. REALLY good.
My email Tarot is just that teensy itsy bit better. I can link you to the pop culture references that intuition throws at us. I can find images to help you see what I see intuitively. I can spell check and back up and find the exactly right words to elevate your reading and make it something extra special.
Email Tarot is available to order ALL of the hours: 24/7, no appointment needed ORDER HERE.
Keeping in mind that I am only one real world person, I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I get the order notice. Full write-ups usually arrive in your inbox within 24 hours, but that might vary a bit during the holidays. Because cookies. And knitting.
Warner Brothers The Matrix 1999
Email Tarot has a lot of advantages.
It gives you the best of my intuition.
You don’t have to wait for an appointment.
You get the ultimate in privacy.
You get a wider variety of layouts to choose from.
You KNOW it is genuine and real. You can’t answer leading questions or give body language cues. There is no way for stage mentalism or magic tricks to come into it.
Plus you get a better price. Working by email, I don’t need a brick and mortar location and can pass those savings along to you. With email, prices start as low as $5 for a one card meditation reading.
The $40 seven card layout is the SAME IDENTICAL reading as an in-person session. You get an hour-equivalent reading for less than the price of a 30 minute in-person session with most psychics.
AND (drum roll please)
I’m bringing back VIDEO distance readings. Instead of reading the distance session, you can listen to it plus see your cards as they are being drawn. If you like the experience of in-person readings but want the lower cost and no-appointment convenience, this is the Tarot for you.
The video readings use the Five Card TaoCraft layout. When you order, you get an instant download explaining the whole process. A link to your individual customized PRIVATE share video reading will come to the email that you specify in your order.
Get yours today before the price for video goes up to match the written readings in January.
Here is an example of a collective blog reading from a few years ago. Your reading will be more focused on you and your question, of course. Video readings for individuals feature the five card TaoCraft layout.
Sage Sips Blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Sorry for being late getting this posted. I was a victim of my own turkey tryptophan and once I woke up from a nap, figured out what year it was and cleaned the kitchen it was getting late in the day. Instead of writing, I settled in and watched “Why Is This Happening Live” with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. They are hands down one of my favorite TV duos, you can almost see the IQ points dripping off of the screen. I feel smarter just by watching those two. But you HAVE to see this special. Especially if you live in America. I don’t know if the link will work for you, I THINK you can see it on the free version of Peacock, but however you need to do it, I URGE every American of voting age to PLEASE watch this. 2024 is going to be globally, historically important – no joke, no exaggeration, no intuition, just the facts on the ground in saying that. PLEASE make time for this. Please ACT. This is for real.
Ok
Enough of the scary stuff for a Friday.
Let’s look at the Lenormand cards we drew Wednesday in part one and see for ourselves if they read any differently in concert than they do individually.
I want to say yes, but not quite in the way the guide book presents.
They do connect very strongly. My colleagues are right about the intensity and in-your-face quality Lenormand seems to be lending to the reading. The cards connect to each other very strongly, but not in a way that changes the individual card’s meaning, but in a way that strengthens the connection between the cards at a layout level. Instead of connected dots, it is a fluid, unified stream of energy and consciousness. This pathway layout flows together like a heartfelt sentence.
The fading energy card is the heart (meaning union/connection akin to the two of cups) with the jack of hearts inset (akin to a knight of cups energy). The word ESTABLISHED comes to mind. I don’t think that this card in this position means that love is leaving or diminishing. It may be solid enough that you can open your focus to other things. Your attention can embrace other things. The love doesn’t leave so much as single specific relationships take up a little less space in your total attention bandwidth. This broadening and softening of focus allows you to bring your love, compassion, and sense of connection to more people and things. EXPANSIVE also comes to mind with this card.
Hmmm…go Marie. If Marie Lenormand is regarded as one of the best “fortune tellers” it is because of the intuition she tapped into, not the cards that were named for her. Trust your own heart and noggin. I suspect that, and some cultural saavy got her to where she went.
Current energy is the Stars cards. I have no idea why this is stars, plural and the other decks have Star, singular, in the major arcana. It probably has no significance at all. In any case, the Stars is associated with divine guidance, just like the Star in RWS cards. There is also an element of wish fulfillment (cue Jiminy Cricket and “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio)
There is some connected-card meaning modification here. The guidebook says that when the Stars and The Heart appear together, it means that a “relationship is blessed.” In the energy I see here, however, YOU are the one doing the blessing, not some divine providence.
Finally the growing energy is the Garden card. This is associated with a place of meeting or community. The inset is stepping forward a bit. The 8 of spades is akin to the 8 of swords. If I think about the 8 of swords, its connotations of empowerment vs powerlessness and victim mindset steps forward.
In understanding the Garden card, lets look at it through the lens of its inset companion, the 8 of spades/swords.
The Pamela Smith art is my favorite representation for the eight of swords because it clearly shows some key ideas. The woman’s feet are unbound. She can’t see, hear or use her arms, but she can walk. It would require that she use care, touch and other senses to move safely, BUT she could walk forward, follow the water (intuition, emotions) at her feet through the circle of swords to safety. Often this comes gives the message of unconventional action or creative problem solving. She can use whatever is at her disposal in order to act and to escape OR she can choose to stand still and remain imprisoned. Each would require its own kind of courage and endurance.
Now, about that sentence.
Expansive love, flowing into guidance and action.
Bless your relationships (of all types)
Speak your love-language, whatever it is, and speak it loudly.
If your love language is cooking special favorite foods for loved ones, you’ve had a good couple of days. However you show affection, let it flow. In loving others we can liberate ourselves.
Over the past several weeks we’ve looked at the history of Lenormand Tarot as its been told by Christopher Butler in the book accompanying this deck and a few quick online searches. The origins are as fuzzy as any other Tarot deck.
So far we’ve looked at a few single cards. The more I work with the deck, the more I appreciate the artwork. Color on black with a certain neon light at night aesthetic is my favorite palette. Been definitely feeling the intp, cyberpunk lofi aesthetic these days. This deck is a standout in the art and visual representation. I don’t care much for the pale colors and deliberately old, eighteenth century look of most of the other decks that I’ve seen. The lesson there is to find a deck you resonate with VISUALLY regardless of RWS vs Lenormand setup to the deck.
See? We really are learning stuff here.
We also learned how the Lenormand Deck pushes you toward intuitive reading. You have to rely on your own intuition for the role that the playing card insets play in the card interpretation – if any. In contrast, the RWS decks use that aspect of intuition through card reversals. Lenormand disregards reversals outright.
I have to agree with my friends who said, in their experience, Lenormand tended to be more blunt, direct, in your face and to the point. I have a hunch that this is a function of Lenormand being a smaller deck and, I suspect, you might get the same punchy quality if you did a major arcana only reading with a RWS deck. Some limited run specialty decks are majors only, and when I first experiments with “cybertarot” software back in the 90s, the demo was majors only – and this has a similar feel to those majors-only readings. Just like when a lens narrows a beam of sunlight, it increases the heat and intensity of the light it could be that a smaller deck increase the intensity of a reading. But I also suspect there is a “goldilocks zone” at play, too. Too small of a deck, or too large of a layout could dilute or blur the cards’ insights to the point that it is no longer useful at all.
In my experience, larger layouts will do that regardless of the deck’s size. Even the 10 card celtic cross can get unwieldy and contradictory. I see no value in even trying the every-card-in -the-deck 4 x 9 grand tableau layout that is common to Lenormand. It is absurd to me on its face. My hunch is that Mlle Lenormand was riffing from pure intuition and using the cards to connect with her clients. That isn’t to say that it is schtick or performance or a con or a trick…people are sometimes more willing to believe “the cards” over what another human has to say. The cards make us feel that the information is otherworldly, something more or special compared to human insight.
The cards are skeletal armature. The cards are a structural foundation on which human intuition builds.
That is the larger, functional insights from these cards today. Please read tomorrow and we’ll take a look at these cards specifically in this pathway layout. The right hand card is fading energies, the middle card is current energies and the left card is growing energy as I read these.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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