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.
Queen of Bombs: Denying the darkness has never lit a candle.
I don’t know if it was Odin’s day, but it was a day.
Enduring comfort is an illusion. Nothing is certain. It isn’t pretty or pleasant, but neither is life. Not all of the time, anyway.
To deny the realities of life is as toxic and dangerous as any other risk or challenge life brings – perhaps more so because of its disguises. The most dangerous disguise of denial is that of comfort.
Tarot is labeled occult and evil, usually by those who wish to wrap us all in the paralytic comfort of their own delusions and desperation for control. Tarot has has dark and violent imagery representing the darker sides of human nature because darkness exists and Tarot is meant to help us cope with it, perhaps even thrive in it.
Denying the darkness has never lit a candle.
The Queen of Bombs comforts us not through glassy eyed and fanatical devotion to an impossible ideal, but by reminding us of the fleeting moments and reminding us of the endless human capacity to believe it just might be OK in time after all.
The Queen of Bombs card was created by Seven Dane Asmund for the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck. Deck used with permission.
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Major arcana energy is right in the middle of it.
You know that moon energy that has been lingering the past few weeks? The same message is here but in a more direct, confrontational way. Major arcana cards tend to be more energetic, urgent, profound, far reaching…you name it.
The literal full moon is in two days. I chalk that up to a good old fashioned Jungian sychronicity – a meaningful coincidence. The Moon card has shifted to the Death card, but the energy of change remains.
As we all know from watching the Simpsons, the death card isn’t literal death…it is a big change. It’s not ‘you are going to get hit by a bus’ death, it is the death of an old view, action, persona…the “old” you that makes way for a new you. This is the ‘natural cycle’ energy from the past few week’s Moon card and the ‘only the empty cup can be filled’ energy we talked about last week but with the volume turned up to 11.
The cup is brimming, and is soon to turn over. The moon is nearly full, it’s time for tides to turn. This week feels like a tipping point of some sort.
Maybe it is the outrageously loud pavement cutting and water line work that is going on in front of my house right now, but I have a twitchy, gut churning ‘bad feeling about this’ worthy of Princess Leia. Something is up somewhere, but I don’t know what and I don’t know when. All I can do is sit here and take my own advice.
Fading energy: Queen of Pentacles, reversed. The Queen of Pentacles in any orientation is about nurturing. Often it is about nurturing yourself to preserve your capacity to help and nurture others. The reversal makes it feel like a reminder to let others nurture you. We all need a little care. If you don’t even have the reserves to care for yourself, allow others to help. Just ask nicely. It’s that simple. The fading energy here may be ours. It doesn’t feel like a go-getter, entrepreneurial kind of week. Astrology might blame it on the Mercury in the microwave phenomenon – it feels like a bigger pattern, more of a tectonic shift than a zippy little optical illusion.
Current Energy: Death. The funky mojo energy reminds me of the beginning of covid to be honest. Maybe we are finally shifting out of that phase of human history. It doesn’t feel quite like impending doom, but a sea change of some sort. Sea change is a good way to put it…it connects with the moon cycle, ebb and flow imagery that has been so prominent lately. The phrase “Brave New World” comes to mind, although it doesn’t feel like an Aldus Huxley reference at all. The unknown can be gut-twistingly frightening. Maybe that is the bell ringing resonant energy that is going on here. We are finally moving out of that storm, cleaned up a little of the mess and are being forced to face facts. Everything has changed and will never be the same again.
I’m going to go put “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Beyond Thunderdome)” on loop. Maybe we are looking at the unknown beyond Thunderdome so to speak. Ah – there it is – “I wonder when we are ever gonna change, change Living under the fear, ’til nothing else remains.” Is this going to be fear or freedom for us? I suspect it will be whichever we choose.
Growing energy: Five of Pentacles
It’s interesting that the Pentacles are the only minor arcana cards showing this week. It’s right back to that hunker down and be practical vibe from 2020. Maybe this really is the unknown other side. Again, the sense of this card as fearful or freeing is again up to us to our choice.
The card also brings to mind a TikTok I saw yesterday. I forget the creator, it was something survival. It was a very sped up video of someone who dug a hole and built a survival shelter out of branches and dry grass & mud daub. They even dug out a fireplace (about the size of a small cooler) complete with chimney.
I looked like a totally warm, dry Hobbit hole when it was done.
The Five of Pentacles is about seeking shelter in a storm.
You can focus on the storm or you can focus on the sanctuary that is available for you to take. Again, our choice.
I ‘hear’ “wrap your wisdom around you like a cloak.” Sheltering through a storm means gathering in, yin, not pushing, not being ostentatious. But it also means being happy that shelter exists to take.
Sometimes humble but sturdy and reliable is a wonderful thing. Look for those kinds of things and take whatever shelter you need this week.
Thank you for reading! Your support through likes, follows, social media shares, and comments is always appreciated! Nothing on this blog is paywalled anymore, and none of my social media is monetized so YOUR Tarot message always comes first. Your support through private readings, memberships, and virtual coffee tips are what fuels it all.
Next up – Wednesday “Odinsday Oracle” – not because I’m not particularly Norse pagan but I am, however, fond of alliteration and Neil Gaimon novels.
This has been a learning experience for me – for you, too, I hope.
I think there is more to take away from this than just dice & image meanings.
This series has been a proof of concept experience: the REAL oracle is our human intuition. Tools and amplifiers like dice, cards, tea leaves, charms, chicken bones or whatever are truly just that. These things and techniques are portals, energizers and amplifiers that help us to access and communicate our own innate intuition and psychic ability better. Because they have a similar function in support of our innate intuition, different oracles can be learned and used in similar ways. There is a great deal of overlap on the energy / intuitive level despite surface differences.
Consciousness and the human experience is expansive and too enormous for any one oracle to encapsulate everything for everyone. The exponential combinations of a handful of cards or dice come close. There are 138 sides in the dice set, rolling 22 dice – if you calculate it out, you get a number so big I don’t even know how to name it. Still, we can learn to work within that enormity and use these intuition helpers in the same way we learn anything. Learning an oracle tool can be logical, methodical and intuitive all at the same time.
We’ve dug down through the layers starting with the individual images on the dice, the meanings associated with the individual dice cubes. In the last post, we talked about connecting all of those things.
The foundation goes full circle. Once you dig down to the nitty-gritty and build up all of the layers of meaning, you have to knit it all together. Think of language – it’s no coincidence we call these things readings. We’ve learned words (side images) and we’ve learned the syntax and grammar (dice, lord cards) now it’s time to make some sentences. It’s time to take this whole project and make it make sense and be use-able. A reading takes all of the digging and layerering and glues it all together into some sort of cohesive whole. THAT is the hardest part. The level of difficulty increases exponentially with each moving part in a reading and the trillions of potential combinations in the case of a 22 dice roll. That is why genuine psychics still exist – anyone can learn to do this, but not everyone has the knack or desire to do all of that digging and layering and gluing. If you pay for an authentic professional reading, you are getting real artistry and skill.
This is also why I cap my Tarot layouts at 7 cards. Larger layouts, like the Celtic Cross or a full 22 dice throw are certainly DO-able, I just find them unwieldy, potentially contradictory and just plain overkill. Why use a chainsaw when all you need is a pair of scissors?
Here is how I’m going to do this…it might not 100% align with the method described in the guide book, but I’m taking artistic liberty since I’m only using a portion of the dice instead of the full roll described.
Since the reading cloth image is a circle, and the dice can potentially orient in any direction of those 365 degrees, I’m going to read the image as-is, no consideration to reversals as you would in Tarot when the cards are all aligned along a single axis.
The dice on the “core” area hold more immediate importance and strength compared to the dice in the outer areas. You all know how I feel about predictions, so tying this to time just doesn’t work for me. I used this side of the reading cloth because as I was setting up for the video, this side felt most right – perhaps most needed by the most people of those who watch and read this. Rather than past, present, future and fated, I think of this in terms of strength of the energy’s influence: Core is the strongest then fated, future, present and past in descending order of influence. Yes, that is very much like the fading-current-growing energy card positions that I wrote into my Tarot layout. I’ve used it for years, and it. Just. Works. It makes sense to continue that proven foundation in this new oracle method.
Since all of the dice fell in the main center circle, that’s as far as I’ll take it. The guidebook talks about how to handle dice on the outer portions of the reading cloth or that fall off of the cloth or table altogether. I leave that for you to figure out if you are interested in getting a set of dice and reading for yourself.
Of the two dice that fell in the core circle, the slightly higher one, relative to where I’m sitting, most catches my attention. It is the grey relations dice on the “alone” face. It shows a single person in a bubble.
The guide book divides the interpretation of any die between when the die lands in the core and when it is elsewhere. In the core, the “alone” face speaks to the querent being the sole focus of the reading (which is my policy for all readings anyway.) This interpretation is a validation for me of something that has been niggling at me for the past few posts – this really is an intensely focused, intimate, personal, individual oracle. This oracle tool isn’t well suited to the at-large collective energy readings of the type we do here with Tarot cards. This is a fantastic tool and technique, but for private readings, not blog readings.
The other core is the action die. When we first rolled it, we saw the “judgment” face with scales and a lot of justice energy. This is the “sacrifice” face, intended (especially at the core) to represent something large and difficult that is being released or a big sacrifice that was made to gain something currently in the querent’s life. Seven Dane Asmund cautions that it “is likely to be a gut wrenching reading. Be prepared.”
Next in level of intensity, we have two dice in the “fated” area. The one on the right catches my attention the most of the two. That is the Elements die on the “wind” face and it relates to a fickle, difficult or changeable person or situation. I get an eight of wands sort of energy here – things up in the air, out of our control, and it is a matter of waiting to see where things land before we can assess and react.
The other high energy “fated” die is the Goblin on the “obsession” face. The guidebook mentions how this die is very often modified or characterized by nearby dice. In this case, the fickle, changeable, difficult, up in the air,beyond reach, not under our control thing has been top of mind, perhaps too much. Taken together with the sacrifice die face – we get a “let it go” message.
The next tier of energy, “present” gives us the same face of the Summer die that we first saw, “gain.” This die is off alone and gives a stand-alone vibe. It feels simple and good and an omen of good fortune – this is a good energy time for paying attention to your creativity and livelihood, especially if the two intersect somehow. All good vibes with that one.
The lowest energy brings the obstacles dice on the emergence face which edges out the Alley die and its “scavenge” face which feels very much on its way out of the door. Of those two the energy definitely lies with the “obstacles” die and its “emergence” image.
The image depicts escape from obstacles, or from a mental or emotional trap. This “getting unstuck” feeling resonates with Hanged Man in reverse in Tarot. There is also a similarity to the five of swords in Tarot with this “overcoming obstacles” energy, especially as Matt Evans drew the five of swords for the Witches Tarot deck. There is also a bit of the Queen of Swords in the way the die relates to “recognizing your power in the moment and rising up beyond what has kept you from feeling free” as the oracle author puts it.
Being in this low key position on the cloth, whether you look at it as time related or not, reminds us that breaking free, picking up the mantle of our power, living free and true to ourselves is not a one time event but instead is an ongoing process.
And there if feels like the energy steps back bringing this reading to a conclusion.
Once again, many thanks to Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC for permission to use his excellent Tarot, dice and oracle cards in this blog and associated social media.
In a few weeks we’ll start a new “learn with me” series looking at the Lenormand Tarot. I’ll be using the Healing Light Lenomand deck under the “free teaching” permissions granted by the publisher https://www.llewellyn.com/about/permissions_tarot.php
Newletter / digest will be on Medium later today. No “weekend shif” Friday post this week. Next up, it seems is next week’s energy path reading.
Thank you so much for reading today and following along with this first “learn with me” series.
Any likes, blog subscriptions (it’s free! Just enter your email in the right column or a the bottom of the mobile page) social media follows (@sagewordstarot) like, shares and comments are all much appreciated!
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!
Sage Sips weekly digest plus the page of pentacles
Things aren’t that newsy at the moment – whew!
If variety (and change) is the spice of life, then the past couple of years have been kind of ghost peppery.
The big pieces have fallen into place and are gelling nicely. Still putting some fine points on some minor details.
Closed the Substack and moved the “newsletter” to Medium. ALL content there is free same as it is here on the main blog – no more paywalled content here, either.
On the new platform, it is going to be less “newsletter” and more of a weekly digest summary linking to the new content here over the week prior. So if you want new content hot off the cyberspace presses right to your inbox, follow this blog. If you get way too much email and just want a weekly summary, follow me on Medium HERE
Tarot isn’t about time, and collective spirit energy doesn’t’ flow in a straight line.
I’ve said it dozens of times, and I’ll say it again: Tarot isn’t about telling you what will happen in life: Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
Right now life is happening in a very deliberate, circumspect way. If you feel stressed, or if you feel like you are getting slammed by life right now then one of two things is going on. Either this simply isn’t the reading for you and your guidance lies elsewhere OR the things that are happening are happening for some reason. The stressing and slamming has to happen to get you where you want (or more likely need) to go, be it physically, mentally or emotionally.
For those who feel like things are stuck or stagnant – don’t worry, the shift is still shifting, the flow is still flowing at the speed that needs to happen, not at the speed we want it to happen.
Here I am given the mental image of the Mississippi river at New Orleans again. It is a big river. It is wide, it is deep. It seems still. But stand on her shore and a mind boggling amount of water moves by you every minute. That is today’s energy. Seemingly quiet, but deep and powerful nonetheless.
And this energy isn’t going anywhere any time soon it seems. Two cards repeat from last week. In all of the time I’ve been doing these monthly (more recently weekly) three card readings I can only think of once or twice that ONE card would repeat from one reading to the next. Two repeating cards is remarkable.
This energy wants to be heard. And its willing to sit with us and abide with us until the time is right for it to move on. Take your time. Spirit will take time for you.
Abide.
Abide keeps coming through. Be patient with yourself, be patient with nature and circumstance and time. Be kind to the moment. Be kind to those around you. Be kind to yourself.
Abide.
Abide this pace of things. Fast flows and turbulence will return soon enough. Neil DeGrasse Tyson famously said that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Neither is under any obligation to meet your expectations or your schedule. The big river flows at its own pace. Flow with it, it will carry you effortlessly. Or stay on the shore, and wait for the next boat or bridge. It is up to you.
The fading energy, the queen of swords, doesn’t mean that your power is fading. It is simply stepping back from the forefront of your attention. True strength doesn’t need to be the center of attention. The Queen of Swords is about stepping up, stepping into and accepting your power.
Ok, you are powerful. So now what? Accepting time is over. Now that it is yours, it is time to begin using it. It is time to begin LIVING it
Which is why we are surrounded by the Three of Pentacles energy. Three of Pentacles is being part of a team or guild, of work. It is about success through work. Contribute. Support your team, they have supported you. Claiming your power within your own mind is great, but it has to be used, applied, and lived in order to become a real, solid, integrated part of you.
The Moon and its changes are still with us albeit with a different looking card. There are multiples of several cards within the Alleyman’s deck. The slack water of last week’s reading is just beginning to slowly, slowly tip in the other direction. Ebbs will flow and vice versa, but again in its own time in its own way.
“The message stands.” You can read about last week’s moon and three of pentacles energy HERE.
And there the energy steps back.
Thank you so much for reading! Next up, “Learn with me: oracle dice” returns Wednesday.
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.
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.
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 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.
Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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