Today’s Tarot: Three of Swords

Everyone suffers at some point in life, but that knowing doesn’t necessarily lesson the pain when you are in the middle of it yourself. Pain isn’t always avoidable. Sometimes all you can do is look for the helping hand right through the middle of it.

Today’s Tarot: The Lovers

Long term dreams are important, but what do you want from today? This moment? This one next step in your journey?

Not sure about about long term dreams or short term steps? Tarot readings can help sort that out. Today’s Tarot looks at general energy of the day, and is meant to be food for thought for anyony. Get a personalized distance reading just for you, no appointment needed HERE.

You Choose: Free Interactive Tarot Reading

Left: Page of Coins. A day for learning practical skills. You don’t have to be perfect right away. It’s more about usefulness and progress than prettiness and perfection.

Middle: Knight of Cups. Emotions are more real, complete, and satisfying when they are constructivly expressed. Don’t just tantrum or gush – make something good come of whatever feeling motivates you today.

Right: Knight of Pentacles. It doesn’t matter if your journey takes you a thousand miles or across the room. Unless you take that first step, you go nowhere.

12 Second Tarot: Queen of Wands

Let your affection flow out to and your pleasure flow in from whatever it will. Understand but don’t stand in judgement of these honest, spontaneous emotions.

Starting March 1 “12 Second Tarot” will be “Today’s Tarot.” Why put a time on timeless ideas?

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12 Second Tarot: The Wheel

 

Every change requires a choice, and every choice results in change.

Change and choice are two sides of the same coin in both subtle and obvious ways. If we choose something radically different from what we have been doing, the change is obvious. Once again I’m reminded of what Chris Chibnall wrote for Doctor Who

“The future pivots around you, here, now. So do good.”

But what about the future when no choice is made, nothing is done. What is the change there? No choice, no change, right? Not entirely.

A physician I used to work with often said that the decision not to decide is still a decision. In that case, the change comes in mindset rather than external circumstances. If you decide to decide later it relieves stress in the present moment, which in turn can help us see clearer, get more information, and you guessed it…make a better decision later on. Not deciding makes for less stress and better judgement….both of which are a change from the initial mental state. 

Deliberately deciding to stay the course, and persist is a choice. Only time will tell if it was a wise one or not. Deliberately deciding to NOT change externally still has internal impacts. One possibility is that choosing to stay on a path changes your level of confidence and courage and persistence for the better.

Even in the most passive, oblivious scenario possible, where no choice is made, time changes. Don’t choose, and by default things will still change around you, like or not. 
Load the change side of the wheel with enough time and external change, it will eventually force a choice. At some point or another, we all wind up choosing if we are happy with our circumstances or not. Once that question is answered, we must choose if we are going to do anything about it or not. If we choose stagnation, we change relative to the world around us that is not stagnant.

Like two sides of a moving wheel, choice and change are very much connected. If you want a change, it requires a choice. Make a choice, even if that choice is to do nothing, some sort of change will still come in time.

Vision 2020: Tarot of the Heart

Since we just wrapped up the Valentine season and the “My Tarot Valentine 2020 series” it only makes sense to start the Vision 2020 series with romance and relationship readings.

From my side of the table, relationship and romance readings are some of the trickiest to do. The intuitive part isn’t difficult. The energy is as easy as easy to interpret as any other topic, but delivering the intuitive message requires an extra dose of care and professionalism .

Generally, people don’t turn to Tarot readings when their love life is all rainbows and unicorns. That’s just how the human heart works. When a relationship is good we just celebrate it and forget Tarot, which is as it should be. When people come to the cards for romance guidance, it is for a reason. Usually that reason is not a happy one.

Often the pain of loneliness draws a client to a reading.  However the client words the question, “Will I ever meet my soulmate or am I going to die alone and miserable?” gives you the gist of it. This should never be minimized or trivialized even when it comes from a young person. The pain is very real to them. They are up to their eyes in it, and likely can’t see beyond it the way objective outsiders can.  A desperate longing for a marriage or long term partnership deserves a gentle touch and above all gentle honesty. It’s great to be able to deliver optimistic news and give a sense that a relationship is on the horizon. It is no fun to tell a person who is hurting that their deep desire is not in the cards. Many times they hear “not now” or “such-and-such has to happen first” as a flat “no.” If you are a Tarot reader, expect blow-back in those situations. A few perceptive souls can hear the “not now” kind of message. Others will go straight to anger and defensiveness. They need time beyond the scope of a Tarot session. Either the flare of anger will pass and a relationship will find them in its time and place, or they will repeat the cycle of unlearned lessons that brought them to the reading in the first place. Either way, the Tarot reader’s honesty helps them move along their life path closer to the loved one that they seek. Platitudes, predictions, smoke and mirrors are cold comforts that serve no one.

On the other side of the same coin, there are people who are already in important relationships. They come to Tarot readings when they are having problems or the relationship has ended. A few of these are relieved to be freed from a stressful relationship by a breakup or divorce, but are struggling with “what’s next?” Most are heartbroken. They are looking for ways to heal the relationship before it ends or to “get back together” after it does. This brings us to the trickiest part of a relationship reading: the other person.

There are two main considerations when a reading turns to any person other than the client themselves.

First, it just doesn’t work. It is back to hammers and cell phones. You wouldn’t use a cell phone to pound a nail and you can’t make a phone call with a hammer. Tarot simply can’t read minds. It can’t tell you if your ex still loves you or if you will get back together or why they won’t answer your calls.

The second and equally important consideration is the other person’s privacy and dignity. I find it ethically wrong to try and read anyone, whether it is actually possible or not, without their knowledge and consent. Consider what happens to that person on an energetic level, even if they are unaware that a psychic is reaching out to them. How would you feel if a stranger looked at your heart and mind and told your ex everything they saw, all behind your back?

Given all of that, I think it wisest to just not take any third party questions. Third party means anyone other than the person reading the cards and the person getting the reading. If you are reading for yourself, that means the cards are about you, and you alone.

There are exceptions, even to this rule. In some rare, wonderful circumstances that other person will voluntarily lend their energy to the reading. If that happens, of course I will say what I sense. When that happens, I view it as the third person’s consent on a soul level. Most of all it is a gift  from that third person to the client. I will always say if energy comes in on its own, but never go out and seek it. In other words, the reading always accepts energy that comes in, but never reaches out to read energy without invitation. I always instruct the client to use discretion if they talk about the reading and the energy gift with the person who sent it. The other person may not be consciously aware that their energy touched the reading, and it is impossible to guess how they might react to the idea.

Romance and relationship readings deserve special consideration. They guide as usual, but also deal with some stronger than usual emotions. Tarot respects those emotions at the same time it respects the privacy and consent of everyone involved. Through it all, Tarot has a heart as it guides you through affairs of the heart.

 

12 Second Tarot: Temperance (aka the cure for Mecury retrograde)

 

Stop. Just stop for a second. 

Take a deep breath. Take a look around. Get the information about where you are, so you can catch your breath and catch your balance before moving on.

Things have been pretty yang lately, energetically speaking. Yin and yang, outward, inward, pushing, taking in….all of those things apply on a mental level as well as the physical.

Choosing is a mentally active thing, even in those times when you choose to do nothing or choose to decide later. Choosing not to choose is still a choice, even when made through apathy or inattention. It is still doing a thing. So is stopping, at least for a moment, to regain your balance.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t resonate with astrology on a lot of levels, most of all with the whole Mercury retrograde thing. I mean, take a tiny step above the ecliptic plane and Mercury moves just fine. Look. Look at the planetary movement from the big picture, from top down. A little shift in perspective and POOF! No problem.

So stop. Just stop.

The cure for all the frustrations that social media looooves to blame on Mercury is to go from frenetic mental yang to a moment of mental yin. Stop. Re-calibrate. Re-orient. Re-balance. And Re-member how the solar system actually works. Think of this trick-of-eye retrograde time as a time for mental yin. Naturally, if you push and keep a frenetic yang spider-monkey-on-amphetamines state of mind during a yin quiet-and-observe energy time, you are going to be blocked and frustrated. If, as Neil Degrasse Tyson says, “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” then neither are the energies of the universe obliged to cater to your agenda. Like the rhythm of the planets, energies ebb and flow. Sometimes energy is right for a large and in charge King of Passions and Choices like we saw yesterday with the King of Pentacles. Other times the energies are right for a moment of watching, mixing, balancing. 

The Tao in TaoCraft is about finding harmony with energies as they are then making a better way forward. Tarot has a card for that.