I’m vaxxed. So are a majority of folks over 12 in our county and community transmission is low per the cdc website.
So in keeping that data, in-person individual readings are back on a reduced summer scedule.
If you are not vaccinated, please wear a mask because nobody wants your delta varient cooties.
If you are not vaccinated ffs GET vaccinated, nobody wants you to die, either. Talk to your doctor if you have any concerns.
I’m not being rude, but I won’t be shaking hands and will be using hand sanitizer for both of our sakes.
Party Tarot is back with an updated service area starting in September…just in time to schedule for Halloween.
Masking policy and the status of in person sevices are subject to change. I’m following the data and setting the rules as the situation warrants. Because … science !!
Details HERE, link in profile. Image by @bitmoji (❤ that app)
Over the past few years, between the pandemic and weird schedules, our family has become world champion at-home staycationers. I’m not complaining. I like it because it usually is a good excuse to treat ourselves to our favorite local restaurants, but that’s another story.
Believe it or not, I have a doctorate degree that relates to this. Not a doctor of vacationing. I have an online remote study Ph.D. in Natural Health from back in the day before online colleges were a common thing. Move over Doctor Doofenshmirtz. Summer hiatus is a good time to put that information into actual practice and take the time to tinker with new things. Call it experimental research.
Genuinely natural alternatives (as opposed to unregulated marketing claims of “natual”) are just as effective as their mainstream counterparts, but they are also more time intensive. Natural things work, but they takes more time and effort than most of us are willing to put into them – myself included.
This year’s experiment might be my new pinnacle of whacky in my alternative tinkering – at least so far. Being middle aged and freshouttafucks, I’m usually not much for hair and beauty stuff. I am, however, getting ruthless about cutting our single use plastic consumption and using more eco-friendly products in general.
I don’t totally like my natural hair color and inherited a forehead adjacent early gray patch a la Bride of Frankenstein, thus Miss Clairol and I have been friends for a loooong time. But it is time for a change because chemicals, plastic, and thinning old lady hair. Enter plant based hair color. No more little non-recyclable plastic bottles and no more slap you in the nose chemical smells. With plant powders, the little plastic bottles are replaced with a bowl from the kitchen (or washed up from last night’s take out.) The eye watering smell (or the gag inducing froofroo fragrance they add to try and cover it up) is replaced by – you guessed it – the smell of plants. Think mowing the lawn or a day in the garden. Or, in this case, freshly mown hay on a sunny day with a giant pot of creamed spinach dumped on top.
This particular plant, cassia obovata, or “neutral henna” as it is marketed, comes from the Ayurvedic tradition and is actually healthy for hair and scalp. It’s been used for centuries for dandruff and the like. Lots of plants have dyes in them. That’s where dyes for cloth and inks originally came from, not chemicals. Thankfully the old recipes and what-plant-makes-what-color knowledge is still around. It is a day long project, but I wanted to give the old school plant based hair color a try.
It’s true that cassia is mainly a conditioner and won’t touch the color of darker hair. Not. One. Bit. I was genuinely surprised that it did anything for my lighter hair, but it really does end up with a nice, warm toned golden blonde, including the grays. Another tidbit I had read proved true…pure cassia obovata is not a good choice for anyone who wants or needs cool or neutral blonde tones. I actually dig the end color because I was aiming for warm tones. I’ve been paying for warm tones for years. This ended up being about the same price as a decent box color at Walmart or something. Certainly it costs WAY less than a salon visit.
The other thing that proved true: it’s volumizing. The old-lady thin texture is normal again. I’ve read that cassia can relax curl, and that adding amla (Indian gooseberry) power does two things: It preserves the curl plus provids the acid that releases the dye molecules from the cassia. If you don’t use amla in the mix, add a splash of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. I don’t think it takes much acid, but as I understand the chemistry, it is necessary. I used amla 15 gms to 50 gms of cassia powder. I also added a splash of aloe, which was suggested to enhance the conditioning effect.
For this project I used 100% pure Cassia Obovata powder (if you use lawsonia aka true henna, indigo aka black henna or anything combination other than pure cassia, it’s a whole different kettle of hair goo. Do your research!! ) Pure cassia is the only way to get the color I was aiming for, so I didn’t really research the other stuff.
To start, measure & mix the powder(s) in your chosen bowl. Add hot water and and about a Tbs of aloe until it is the consistency of pancake batter or a runny yogurt. Let the now brown & disturbingly baby poop looking mixture sit for 4 hours. Yes, hours. This is natural and plastic-free (the powders came in foil pouches) not modern and convenient. You don’t have to stand there and watch it. Just mix it and leave it. If it goes longer, no worries. For a dye effect and not just conditioning, word is that you have to use it within a 4 – 12 hour window after adding the water. Beyond that, and it supposedly works as conditioner but the dye degrades so much it isn’t useful even on light hair.
When it comes time to apply the poopgoo you might want gloves, or you might not. Lawsonnia, the real-deal red hair henna is also used for mehndi, the temporary (and gorgeous!) skin art that originated in India and will obviously stain. But like I said, this is about a pure cassia conditioner / gold-blonde spinach smelling poopgoo hair color experiment. I didn’t have any problem with staining at all.
I coated my hair with this deeply weird muddy stuff, covered it with a shower cap, wrapped that in a towel, and warmed the whole thing with the hair dryer.
Did I mention it felt deeply weird, like mud-clay wrapped in plastic wrapped in a towel, part ceramics class, part Laura Palmer Twin Peaks reference?
I tooled around the house with the spinach smelling poopgoo contraption for four hours. Yes, hours. I didn’t want to do much wearing a big wobbly towel turban, so instead I spent some quality time with my knitting needles and a copy of Matt Auryn’s excellent book, Psychic Witch. The final step is to rinse out the drying-clay-feeling abstract sculpture on my head with warm water and no shampoo, followed by air-drying. For the first evening, it felt like hair that had been caked in mud, but look at the mirror! Good color and better gray coverage than the store bought semi-permanent color. This is temporary too, which is why I was expecting the big fat nothing I’d gotten before from another instinctively “natural” store brand I’d tried in the past. By the next day, the recently caked-in-mud feeling was gone with soft and volumeized texture left in its place.
And look! Color! It worked! Cassia obovata spooged out its crysophanic acid and coated my gnarly looking Lily Munster streak with pretty blonde-ness. This poopgoo is the real deal!
via Giphy.com
Kitten Whiskers is a series of posts about some of my favorite things, even if they are a little off-topic. I hope they spark a little delight for you the way they have for me.
Back to regular hours! Email readings are available to order 24/7 no appointment needed. Usually you will get a response within 12 – 24 hours. Phone/zoom/google meet/ skype live distance readings by appointment, details HERE
Welcome to my happy place, located squarely at the intersection of science and spirit.
As I see it, science and spirituality are not at odds. Ever. Science and religion? That is another rant for another day. The thing that makes sense of it all for me is to think of it in terms of human mind and consciousness interacting with this three (four) dimensional time-space universe which we inhabit.
Science is the best thing we have for learning about, understanding and dealing with the stuff out there, outside of ourselves. Science is the best tool we to understand our place in the outer world. Science is not quite so great at dealing the extremely complex and often random stuff in here, within ourselves. Spirituality is learning about, understanding and dealing with the inner world. When we see science and spirituality as complimentary, not mutually exclusive, those two worlds are connected. Both science and spirituality together teach us that in-here and out-there are one seamless part of a far greater whole.
I can’t remember if it was the book or the PBS series, but this reminds me of Carl Sagan in Cosmos:
“If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.”
Carl Sagan
If the physical world leans toward the patterned, scientific side of the in-between world, then the inner psyche seems to lean far more toward the complex side of the in-between. Scientific methods have given us psychology and psychiatry, but these are disciplines that are, in my opinion, better suited for problem solving. They first define (with debateable accuracy) mental and emotional health. Then they move on to solve problems from outside of that scientifically determined definition. For a healthy person, science and psycology’s definitions of a healthy life are profoundly unsatisfying and incomplete. Humans need art and beauty and a deep connection to the universe that science in its infancy lacked (and only since Einstein, as far as this interested layman can see, has begun to consider.) Humans need to create, imagine, and feel none of which can be be understood through the scientific method alone. Yes, science contains all of the awe, wonder and breathtaking beauty of human existence, but it is not the only path to it.
Science vs spirituality is by no means truth vs falsehood, proof vs assumptions. Sure they differ in the types of data sets they accept, but fundamentally they are both simply ways and methods of understanding and interacting with the grand everything of the Cosmos. Science deals with the physical but need not lack the emotional and esoteric. Spirituality deals with mind and consciousness but need not lack rationality and reason. Both are both, because both are human.
When loved ones are lost and hearts are in pain, hard science and cutting edge genetics won’t help. Masks and medicines can’t cure stress and mourning and heartache. That is the realm of spirit. This is where the tools and talents we use to face the unknown come into play. This is where we might have to get comfortable with a little not-knowing (related post: “I dunno“) Tarot can help with that.
Hare-brained, unproven, unscientific nonsense or wishful thinking won’t prevent or treat covid-19. People naturally, understandably fear the unknown and will fill in that knowledge gap with anything if times are desperate enough. Science is, nevertheless, our best tool for figuring out this crazy situation. Please, please watch the video (used with the permission of the creator.) It makes some sense out of the vaccine. It fixes that particular unknown. Then for the love of good sense and staying alive, get the vaccine when it is available to you. Until at least 3/4 of everybody is vaccinated, STILL wear a mask anytime you leave your home, stay six feet away from anybody you don’t already live with, and ffs wash your dang hands.
Hi. This is me from (mumble mumble) years ago. I still use this photo because it is the only one of me I’ve ever really liked.
This is me now, in Bitmoji form which is as good as it’s going to get because the website, blog and socials are mostly about Tarot, a little bit about spirituality, with a sprinkle crystals, meditation, spirituality and just enough off-topic things to keep it interesting. I want you to feel confident and comfortable ordering a reading here, so please let me tell you a little about the bitmoji-fied face behind your email reading or the voice on the phone.
I started reading Tarot cards around 1990 or so. Early 90s anyway. I was still in my 20s, had left my parent’s religion and was finding my own spiritual path. Tarot & oracle cards played a crucial role in helping me find a healthy way out of a fundamentalist evangelical upbringing .
I started reading for myself because, honestly, who could afford to use those phone psychics that were so popular back then? It took a little effort to find authentic readers and teachers in those pre-internet days, especially in an a conservative area where good psychics were still mostly underground. Eventually, I was very fortunate to have readings, workshops and intuition development classes with talented, brilliant people like Sallie Christensen, Gina Hiller, Joy Star, even meeting Ted Andrews once at his Animal Wise workshop.
It turned out that I’m actually really good at doing Tarot readings too. A good friend encouraged me to work online, so I started with Keen, Advice Trader and AllExperts under the handle Baihu. When dissertation expenses came along, I started working for myself and Modern Oracle Tarot was born. In 2018, Modern Oracle and Tarotbytes blog were expanded to include Reiki, meditation tutorials, and my Quirk & Flotsam Etsy shop. I renamed it all that Fall to create the TaoCraft Tarot that you see today.
I’m a Reiki Master-practitioner (2000)
I’ve been doing folk arts and crafts since my Grandmother taught me to embroider when I was 6 years old. Making handcrafted meditation beads was a natural extension of everything else at TaoCraft Tarot. The meditation beads are in the TaoCraft Tarot Shop along with ebooks like PeaceTarot and a few other handmade odds and ends that find there way there.
I’m a retired Tai Chi instructor (Chinese Martial Arts, Mount Lebanon PA 1998-99) but still love playing taijiquan. I’ve studied meditation, Taoism, Zen / Chan Buddhism and other spiritual traditions on my own from various sources through the years. In magick, you might call me a solitary eclectic.
In “real life” I have a Bachelor of Science in Medical Science and worked as a physician assistant in psychiatry and cardiology. When motherhood came along, I went back to school to be able to work independently, completing a Ph.D. in Natural Health. Although the school’s accreditation has since been withdrawn, my work and dissertation stands. The dissertation is available to view on RondaSnow.com. Needless to say, this is a science, logic and reason friendly Tarot style.
That’s pretty much all of it. It’s all Tarot and the good stuff from now on, at least until I get the urge to re-introduce everything next year at anniversary time. I’m really grateful to all of you, new subscribers and old friends alike. If nothing else, I hope this lets you know I’m nice, normal, nonthreatening kind of person who just happens to be able to read Tarot. I wish you all the best and hope you feel confident getting reading because there is nothing to fear here.
Left: Six of Swords. True learning and discovery may require that we leave behind previously cherished ideas when they prove to be no longer useful, but such is the science of spiritual growth. It is a bittersweet but necessary parting of ways.
Middle: Six of cups. Things are what they are. Drop your worries and expectations, and take another look as if you were a small child – or a space alien – who had never seen any of it before.
Right: Nine of Pentacles. Job well done. Enjoy the fruits of your labor bla sipping a glass of fine wine while you turn your hard-earned knowledge and wisdom toward your next steps.
NEW etsy shop listings – 7 card InkMagick pen and paper Tarot reading plus one card mini Ink Magic handwritten reading.
I’ve had a good time with the one year anniversary. Halloween was the perfect day for the re-branding and re-launch last year. Thank you all so much. It means a lot that you stuck with me through the transition and I am grateful for all the new friends made along the way.
It just doesn’t feel quite complete without a matching bookend of a post about the TaoCraft name.
It is a sweet spot, philosophically, authentic and real. To my mind it feels like equal parts Alan Watts, Ted Andrews and Carl Sagan. It has been a joy to raise the tricolor freak flag of Taoism, Energy & Magick, and being openly secular. Hmm. That is an interesting mental exercise I’d not thought of until just now. If you were to make a flag to symbolize your true self, what would it look like? I’ll have to think about it. I’m thinking a white field with a taijitu, a pentacle and an atom. Hit me up on Instagram or Twitter – what would your own personal flag look like?
What is in a name after a year of living with it? Labels are still as meaningless or as empowering as we wish them to be. After this re-branding exercise, I think George R.R. Martin got it exactly right in Game of Thrones when Tyrion told Jon “Never forget what you are, the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.” I don’t regret taking a run at being all modern, trying to educate the world about the realities of predictions, putting energy into a professional, sanitized presentation. It was camouflage to protect my dragon baby. Now that she is grown and fierce and wonderful and breathing fire on her own, it was time to burn that whole house down.
Pippin Miller, of https://hyggelightwork.com/ did an oracle card reading for me summer 2018 when I was having a mid life empty nest only child goes to college crisis. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but a storm of broken glass shards crystallized into place. I don’t remember her exact words (sorry Pip) but the idea of it was crystal clear in my mind, and I could hear AJR’s “Burn the Whole House Down” earworming in my deep intuition. I’d been tinkering with the idea of “TaoCraft” as a concept and a name for years. Her reading was the starter’s gun at the beginning of a sprint. It was time.
So no more sanitized, blue, modern, suburban mom face.
Now it is all owls, black and gold, intuition, magick, wisdom, Reiki, meditation, and unabashedly secular.
The benefits for me have been many. The benefits for you are one simple thing: Better-than-ever Tarot readings. Authentic and honest, I can do better, more confident work for you from this comfortable place.
To that end, I’ve added a few things. Click here to see the map of my in-home individual reading and party service area. If you live outside of the area, no worries. I’ve found some quiet public places where we can meet. I’ve meet people there lots of times and never had a problem.
If your party is outside of the service area…don’t hesitate to contact me anyway. I take parties outside of the service area on a case by case basis depending on location and my schedule. I have added a travel fee for anything too outrageous.
Distance readings are still my specialty. A computer keyboard is a direct hotline bat signal right to my intuition, so you get as good of a reading as you would in person. Since I can work from my favorite chair, wearing fuzzy bunny slippers and sipping coffee, it might even be a little bit better. It helps when I can sit and think a minute without the silence that makes some people feel little awkward in a live reading.
Also there is a shiny new ebooklet that tells you all about a reading. A reading with me will only meet or exceed your expectations after reading it because you will know exactly what to expect. Click here for your free copy: TaoCraft Portfolio free download
I’m working on an expanded version with essays about Romance relationships, predicting the future and all sorts of other behind the scenes stuff. That will be coming to the Etsy shopsoon, along with other titles hopefully.
“There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies” – William Shakespeare
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost” – Ghostbusters
In the first Zombie Cat post we talked a little bit about the intersection of Tarot and science. Now lets shift gears yet again and add in the spiritual, fringe, and frankly, “woo-woo” aspect of things. Tarot intersects all of those, too.
When I’m not looking at the world as a giant Taoist Taijitu (yin/yang symbol) I tend to see a lot of things in terms of a Venn diagram. That’s why I chose a triquetra as the main symbol in my old Modern Oracle logo. This “trinity knot” is essentially an excerpt of a three circle Venn diagram which in turn symbolizes much in my work…mind/body/spirit (for holistic health) or mother/maiden/crone (for the stages of life) or sea/sky/land (our connection with Nature) and many more such groups of three. I see Tarot as overlapping with self, science and spirituality, again giving us that lovely triquetra shape.
So, back to Tarot and spirituality. Any good thesis defines its terms. In this case we have to define spirituality. I’ve noticed a tendency for people to use spirituality and religion almost interchangeably. They aren’t. As I see it, they are totally different, damn near opposite things. I define spirituality as internal and individual. Spirituality is how we as individuals engage with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and our existence within it. Religion, on the other hand, is external, codified, ritualized, other, outside of our individual self. Religion is how a collective of people over time has engaged with the wordless, intangible aspects of the universe and pronounced them to be. We express our spirituality in out external lives. Spirituality goes from the inside out. Religion structures our external lives as a way to instruct the internal. Religion is outside in. Tarot is intuition – it is inside to inside. It has everything to do with spirituality, nothing to do with religion.
Spirituality is unlimited. It is in this vast inner world where Tarot applies and finds its usefulness. Yes, the cards are external. But they don’t instruct our inner world from the outside in as a religious practice might. They are a mirror to reflect out inner world back to us and lens to help us understand what we see there. They reflect and shine light in the dark corners, allowing that inner world of spirituality to illuminate and expand, grow and thrive.
The cards are nothing more than just pieces of paper. It is centuries of projected wisdom and symbolism written on the cards combined with the intuition and insight of the Tarot reader’s living modern mind that leads the way to enlightenment…not the pieces of paper alone. The cards are the Venn diagram intersection of mind and matter that lets us catch glimpses of the possibilities and probabilities afforded to us by the physical/quantum universe of which we are an intimate and inseparable part.
Tarot cards are our portal into the trinity of humanity, science and spirituality. They are a magnet that draws wisdom, guidance, insight and empowerment out of a melange of known, unknown, explicable, inexplicable, and the heart that seeks to know more.
There is more in heaven and earth than we have yet to dream and discover. There is more inside ourselves as well. There is more than just a dead or living cat in Schrodinger’s box. Woo-woo as they may seem, disappearing cats and zombie cats are part of the bigger multiverse of the human heart, mind, imagination and spirit.
Zombie Cat is in the house! Yes-or-No Tarot is now available to order on the home page. These 3 card Tarot readings answer any ONE yes-or-no question. Fun, lighthearted and tongue in what’s left of his cheek, Zombie Cat’s readings are 100% guaranteed to have words in them and a 50% chance of being dead wrong. Order HERE.
“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
– Doctor Who in the “Blink” episode written by Steven Moffat.
There are two words that make me cringe a little when I read (or hear) them in a Tarot question: “Will” and “When”.
Predictions and time are knotty subjects in this work.
Predictions are actually a scientific thing. A scientific prediction is, in essence, expert opinion about what should happen based on existing data and past results. For example, we can predict where in the sky Mars will be a year from now based on laws of gravity, planetary motion, existing observations and so on. As I understand it, that is the kind of “prediction” that a law of physics or scientific principle has to be able to make in order for the principle to be considered valid within the scientific method.
Science spends so much time and energy bashing and demeaning “psychic predictions” when they are, in essence, the same as the scientific kind of predictions. The psychic reader is an objective observer, knows human nature, and can see trends that the person getting the reading may not see. A Tarot reader can predict where things are going in a relationship just like a scientist can predict where Mars is headed over the next year. The only real difference is psychic predictions are based on non-linear logic and de facto psychology instead of linear logic and hard data.
And that is looking at it from a very superficial, everyday experience point of view. This is Isaac Newton kind of stuff. It’s like predicting that when an apple detaches from the tree, it will fall down. What if we go a just a little bit quantum about it?
Think Schrodinger’s Cat.
In theory, once the experiment is set up and started, the cat could come out of it alive or not. But why not both if you are into zombies? Or neither one if the cat suddenly ceased to exist? Disappearing / Zombie Cat could happen…it’s just extreme magnitudes of unlikely as I understand the BBC Horizon Series’ program “Parallel Universes” (hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku, based on his book “Parallel Worlds”)
When the moment of discovery is still in the future, the possibility and attendant probability exists for all outcomes. In the mysterious and undetermined future, all four conditions exist, even our unlikely disappearing / undead pet. Can you predict which way THAT is headed using nothing but your brain and handful of Tarot cards? If you “predict” the more likely dead vs alive construct, is that psychic or science? If you predict Zombie Cat, is that quackery or was the intuitive vision simply dialed into a different part of a far flung multiverse?
Zombie Cat may well exist out there. We don’t know because multiverses, as the video says, is unproven. No-cat and Zombie Cat might be out there, but they just don’t make the jump from possible to probable to IS, at least not in this world. All potentials exists until “the wave collapses” and the moment becomes NOW instead of future, and then slips instantly into the past. Now and Past are fully collapsed probability waves. They exist – ska-doosh! – done deal, nothing to predict. The future on the other hand, that’s a different animal still.
Now, just to make things really interesting, let’s introduce Zombie Cat to Alice the Vampire.
In the movie Twilight, the psychic vampire Alice could see the future insofar as people have decided what they want to do. If someone changes their mind or changes their action, then her vision changes. She can predict but with uncertainty. Her predictions are predicated on the course people are on, not any one fixed outcome. Alice the vampire’s visions and Zombie Cat’s existence are a matter of probability, not “accurate prediction.” And so it is with Tarot and psychic readings.
Let’s say our cat has human-like intelligence and has a choice rather than being a victim of circumstance as in the classic thought experiment. Using the Einstein gunpowder version of things, what if there was some choice the cat could make or some action it could take that would keep the gunpowder from exploding? What if it could disconnect the fuse? Now how do you make predictions under that set of conditions?
Imagine your psychic vision was of a dead cat? (a 50% probable outcome in the original experiment.) What if the cat heard you make that “psychic prediction” and blew out the fuse when it otherwise wouldn’t have? Was the prediction wrong?
Will you get that job? I dunno. Did you apply for it? Update your resume? Schedule an interview? Check the classifieds for other options? (What has the cat done to keep the powder from exploding) Has the person doing the hiring made any decisions or taken any actions? (collapsed the probability wave)
A reading can’t predict a specific outcome, but it can give you advice and it can help you make decisions that nudge the probabilities of getting the job in your favor such as be flexible (4 of swords), emphasize your skills and experience (The Emperor) or show you’d be a hard working team player (3 of coins). A good advice reading is like the psychic yelling at the cat in the thought experiment bunker to blow out the fuse to improve the chances that it won’t blow up.
When will you get married? I dunno. The future is just as wibbly-wobbly as the Doctor told us. But Tarot can give you ideas about how to bring love and happiness of all sorts of things into your life. Intuition can help you make the best possible choices along the way, not predict what lies at the end of the road.
If you do nothing, take no advice, make no choices, then it is all just a coin toss. You might get anything from an explosion right up to a Zombie Cat. But who knows? Meeting a friendly Tarot reading Zombie Cat might be a lot of fun.
Next time: The Ghost of Zombie Cat
Videos by Minute Physics, via youtube.com creative commons permissions Please watch! I highly recommend them!
We’ll get into the superficial, seeming contradictions between Tarot, spirituality and science some other day. For now, Imma indulge my science loving geek girl side.
In the words of my all time favorite TV show, Mythbusters, “Failure is always an option.”
Only ideas that are confronted can ever change. The best way to challenge an idea is to kick the tires and take them out for a test drive. Also known as an experiment. Tarot, holistic health is based on experimentation and science. Ok, ok I can practically hear your eyes rolling out there. True enough, the 100% accurate predictions, promise to fix your love life, only see me and send money crowd doesn’t pass the smell test, scientific or otherwise. True enough, you can’t objectively measure and double blind control subjective things, but that hasn’t stopped psychology has it? Neither should we intuitive folk be cowed by science snobs. THINK about it. Tarot has been in use for problem solving, personal enrichment, stress management and defacto therapy for hundreds of years. That is a heckuva data set. Everyone and their uncle weighs in on Tarot etc. Those skilled in it write books and practice it, skeptics harpoon it (with and without reason) and charlatans exploit it, but it is clearly doing SOMETHING or people follow the empty promises so easily and they wouldn’t spend their hard earned money on it so consistently. The difference between the good the bad and the ugly falls to ethics. Science celebrates the ethic of honesty as much as we do.
Honesty meaning admitting you have failed. That’s always an option, remember? Not only is it an option, it is something to be celebrated. My favorite part of watching “Meet the Robinsons” with my daughter is when Lewis’ invention fails. Everyone cheers. Everyone is thrilled for him. “From failure you learn. From success, not so much”
So why am I opining about failure? Because I’m pulling the plug on the “Tarot Without a Net” series. It isn’t a failure as a Tarot exercise, but it is kind of a bust as far as being an interesting blog series for you to read. I encourage you to watch Phil Plait’s TED talk below. The first lesson of failure (even tiny ones like this) is admit them to move the larger body of knowledge forward. Admitting failures is an ethical imperative and an important part of science…and Tarot.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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