Tag: spiritual guidance

Growing Ogres

Shrek: ….ogres are like onions

Donkey: They stink?

….

Shrek: No! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers

from “Shrek” copyright 2001 Dreamworks Pictures, quote via imdb.com

Layers mean complexity. Layers apply to all sorts of things that are actually more complex than they seem at first glance; ogres, onions, cakes and – you guessed it – Tarot.

Reading Tarot for yourself is actually quite simple. In a couple of hours I could teach you to do good DIY readings for yourself. (Related: PeaceTarot ebook)

Reading for other people is another story. High level professional readings are, like onions and ogres, more complex than it seems on the surface. That’s the whole point of them. A professional reading can gives you extra layers of insight and experience that you can’t get alone. Two heads are better than one. Two eyes give depth perception (related post: parallax) The two of us working together gives your reading another layer of understanding.

Sometimes layers talk about authenticity. Sometimes you have to peel back a few layers to get to the real heart of the matter. We’ve talked about authenticity and public Tarot practice before, after my Modern Oracle Tarot work was re-branded to TaoCraft Tarot (related: what’s in a name, Shakespear’s Roses, Spell Your Name)

That’s all well and good, but consider another aspect of layers: growing new ones. Interestingly, actual onions grow on the inside. New layers are added at the core while older outside layers get dry and thin and ultimately fall away. In this, onions give us another useful metaphor.

In the medical field, and no doubt many other professions, continuing education is a condition of licensure and employment. You have to keep learning and keep current if you want to keep working. Whether it is required or not, whether it is career related or not, lifelong learning is a respected mark of excellence. Learning isn’t just formal education. Learning comes from experience and experimentation and the living of life. Artists’ work evolves over time. Any person’s point of view can evolve over time.

And so, the “Modern Oracle” layout is evolving. I’m calling abort on the video / text hybrid format. It was an experiment that failed, and I’ve learned something important from it.

Remember how deeper layers are often perceived as more authentic and how old layers of growing onions turn papery and fall off? It’s time for the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle layouts to evolve, to become more authentic, to show more of their inner complexity. The video hybrid isn’t the way for that to happen. The names of layout card positions are changing. It’s a tiny detail that you may not even notice from your side of the Tarot table. On my side of the table it is important shift in mindset. This allows me to fully and authentically follow what intuition and spirit shows me.

I wrote the initial layout meanings to create a bridge from old fashioned, predict-the-future, fortune telling layouts to a more modern advice, guidance and empowerment reading. I wrote the Modern Oracle layouts specifically to show the power of your choices over your future. Cards that once were called “past, present and future” in the old style became “lessons from the past, current situation, and moving forward.” Predicting the future evolved into making an action plan.

Now it will go one step further. I in my minds’s eye, I see a reading in terms of dynamic energy flows, not a concrete road through time. As Modern Oracle layouts become TaoCraft layouts, we will let go of time and predictions entirely. If the Modern Oracle layout was like GPS map for your path ahead, the TaoCraft layout is like a GPS traffic update with a weather report.

Card 1, lessons from the past, will become Fading Energies, symbolizing energies that are moving away from you. These are things that need less of your attention.

Card 2, current situation, will become Current Energies, the energies that are strongest, and deal with things that need your attention in this moment.

Card 3, moving forward will become Growing Energies, energies moving toward you, or gaining influence in the path you’ve currently chosen. It still isn’t predictive. It is still intended to guide you, help you prepare for possible conditions ahead. Think of it like a weather report. It doesn’t tell you exactly what will happen to you during your day, but it can give you the chance of rain or sun while it happens.

Card 4 will remain Choices. It is still placed under the current energies card and at the center of the layout because that is still the place of power. Empowering your choices is still the heart of the reading. The choices card will take on a more advisory tone than before. Instead of suggesting how to persist or how change your path, it focuses on whether changing or whether staying the course is the wisest thing to do.

Card 5 is still Alternative Path just like before, showing the most open alternative path you if you decide a change is needed. (Or it can help keep you on your path if you like the way things are headed.)

Card 6 Helping Energies and card 7 Potential Challenges are the same as always, and speak to exactly what the name implies.

Long story short, if you are dead set on a specific “accurate” prediction, you aren’t going to like the new TaoCraft layouts. If that’s the case, you need the Zombie Cat yes/no readings like we did the other day. Even then, you have to realize it isn’t 100%.

If you are ready for next level, dynamic energy readings, I can help. Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot.

,

Sit down!

Another way to understand reversed (upside down) cards in a Tarot reading.

I don’t know who enjoyed the cartoons more, my daughter or me.

Kids in the early 2000s had way better shows to watch than we did. But then, I’m old and decrepit and had to wait for Saturday to watch them. Still, Spongebob and Jimmy Neutron rocked.

One of the funnier bits in Jimmy Neutron was when Jimmy and Cindy used double negatives to get the teacher to give them permission to leave the classroom. When Carl tried to use some sort of complicated quadruple negative, all he got from Mrs. Fowl was a loud “Sit Down, Carl!”

Sometimes reversed Tarot cards are like Carl’s double negative attempt and they need to sit down.

Energy flows like a river. Tarot can point out where the current flows most freely…and where there are rocks in the way. Sometimes there are whirlpools and eddies and quiet pools. Reversed cards can make things go in circles if you get too tied up in them. There is a general notion that if a card turns over upside down (relative to the person doing the reading) its meaning is also reversed, presumably flipping the card from positive to negative connotations. Sometimes a reversed card is generally felt to be a negative omen, regardless of the specific card or meaning.

If the card points to the dark side of life in the first place?

If the reversed bad card is turned into a good card, why not just throw down a good card in the first place? Isn’t there more to it than that? Doesn’t that rob the reversal of any meaning? So what if it does?

Reversed cards can be difficult for beginner readers, exactly because of these swirls of energy (and questions) and the double negative style of communication. This is why I tend to tell reversed cards to sit down.

Double negative communication and any difficulty with reversed cards begins from a place of absolutes. The root mistake is to think a card has a fixed positive or negative connotation in the first place.

My method for dealing with reversed card is to view it as neutral regardless of orientation on the table. Take today’s card, the Hanged Man as an example. Let’s give it the ‘stagnation’ meaning today. For someone who has been harried and hurried and pushed, a time of being “stuck” might be a gift of enforced rest just when it is most needed. For someone who is rested and ready to move, “stuck” is a source of enormous frustration. To the first person, if the hanged man is read as meaning lots of new starts and forward momentum, which indeed could be negative and stressful for someone already too much on the move. For the second person, reversed hanged man and the connotation of forward movement is good news, not one bit negative in any way. The card and its message is neutral, not matter how it falls on the table or which side of its nature steps forward. The good or bad, positive or negative is assigned in context by the sitter (Sitter or seeker means the person getting the reading. When you read for yourself, reader and sitter are the same person.)

By beginning from a position of neutrality about the base card meaning, allowing the client to make any ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ judgement about how the card’s message applies to them. It makes it easier to read a reversal: take whatever meaning steps forward to you. If it is reversed, that simply means that the idea, life lesson or energy movement is blocked or challenged in some way, like a whirlpool outside of the river’s primary flow.

Or, it may mean nothing other than random chance in a deck that has been used and shuffled.

Let your intuition be your guide. If no intuition steps forward, then default to method. In this case, make the base card neutral in good vs bad, consider all the possible meanings for the card, and take the reversal to mean slowed or challenged energy surrounding whatever the card is addressing.

Class dismissed. You can stop sitting down now, Carl.

The Year Ahead: A Chat With Zombie Cat

Here in the U.S., literally at the exact time as the election results were being announced in favor of President-elect Biden, Trump’s lawyers held an inept and thoroughly mocked press conference at “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” a lovely garden supply place nestled between an adult bookstore and a crematorium. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. Internet hilarity has, of course, ensued. As a result I can hardly look at the word “seasons” and keep a straight face. The “Seasons of the Year” layout name had to go. I offered to give a reading to the person who could come up with the best new name for it. Know how many people participated? None. Zero. Nobody.

*sips hot cup of schadenfreude*

I’m over it.

Not the laughing at the fall of the worst administration in U.S. history part. THAT is actually pretty entertaining. I’m over finding some cutesy-pants name for the layout. “Year Ahead” says what it is. Clear, straightforward, it works. I’m also over trying to “market” what I do here. I am a wise, skilled, experienced psychic. I’m here if you need me. I’ve done my part: Made my presence known, put things in order, and put a candle in the window metaphorically speaking. The sign on the cyber-door says open.

Beyond that, I can take a hint. None of the promotions have ever really connected with people. It feels like all the giveaways and special offers come from a place of fear and worry. I like to imagine I had a chat about the whole marketing thing with my fictional, snarky, dgaf alter-ego, Zombie Cat.

We’re both over it.

It’s just not the right vibe for this place. TaoCraft is about authenticity, simplicity, honesty, compassion – all the treasures that a Taoist influence has to offer. All of the layouts are now available all of the time, including Zombie Cat’s yes/no. The prices are as low as I can afford to make them – all of the time. It’s a fearless, solid, steady, and reliable energy. Really good Tarot needs that kind of environment.

Tarot is a respite in an emotional storm. Tarot is a light bulb over your head just when you thought you were all out of ideas. You can’t build those things out of solicitous, cutesy-pants, attention seeking energies.

If you want real, genuine, honest, skilled, experienced…and yes, affordable…Tarot guidance, I’m here for you. Normal pants and all.

Distance Tarot including the Year Ahead and Zombie Cat’s yes/no layout is available for order anytime, no appointment needed on the HOME PAGE

Tree Thinking

Timing is a thing.

The queen of cups and the four of cups have been showing up a lot lately. Most of the professional Tarot readers I know have had the experience where a message for us will piggyback through the same cards as the message for our clients. Especially if there is a repeating meta-pattern. You’ve seen it. Remember the way Pentacle cards kept turning up and gave a pattern of advice that seemed relevant to the general pandemic zeitgeist in addition to the individual messages for the blog (that you saw) and the individual messages (that you didn’t see)

The same thing happened here. There has been a little tweek to the website and business-y end of TaoCraft that has been niggling at me. It was one of those six of one vs half-dozen of the other kind of things. It was super minor, no hurry stuff, so I just hadn’t yet done a reading for myself (it is, after all, that elfcon 1 time of year and handmade gifts don’t care about pandemics) Then, wrapped up in a bow like a gift from the universe, cards piggybacked my answer in along with all the other messages.

Not only does that give me my personal answer right along with the other information, it reaffirms what I’ve observed and believed alabout Tarot all along: The right message will find you one way or another. It might be through cards that repeat until you get the clue. It might be a sudden epiphany of unrelated dots that suddenly connect. It might be pure synchronicity. But one way or another, your guidance will come. My advice is to, whenever you can, respond to the tap on the shoulder before life has to hit you in the face with a frying pan.

The four of cups is associated with meditation. I tend to fall into the trap of thinking that an answer will come DURING meditation time itself. But that isn’t always the case, I’ve found. Ideas still come at the usual weird times as when I’ve let meditation practice slip. The light bulb still clicks on in the shower or while washing dishes or on a long drive. That spontaneous process seems to happen more easily and with more clarity during days and weeks when meditation was part of the overall mix of life.

Life will bring answers sooner or later, in one form or another. The right message will find its way to you. A relaxed, quiet mindset helps that process flow.

Answers come in their own time and timing. We may not all be able to go sit under a tree and think. But we can all make time to just let our thoughts flow by. In those times without striving or grasping, the way is made for the answer to find us.

I dunno

the value of not knowing

public domain image please support sacred-texts.com

Life is a mystery.

Some would say a box of chocolates. Others of us might lean more toward a word that sounds like bitstorm. Chocolate or otherwise, sometimes you just don’t know where it is going to splatter.

Not knowing is part of life, and and it is unnerving as heck. Nobody likes it. Trying to cope with the unknown comes in different forms. We can prepare for it, and make contingency plans as best as you can. It is warm and comfy to wrap yourself in if-then logic. If X happens, then I’ll do Y, but if A happens then I’ll do B, if C happens then have mercy….

I don’t blame people who want predictions. Predictions are uncertain in and of themselves, so they only push life’s uncertainty back a step and hold it at arm’s length until facts and reality sets in. Advice and guidance are more effective. Rather than a prediction that still might or might not materialize, guidance adds a degree of information, a tiny bit of knowing that increases both our comfort levels and our ability to make contingency plans.

Imagine driving on a long road trip, and not quite knowing where you are. But ah-ha! A little sign on the side of the road lets you know that you are on highway I 79 going north. If I keep going straight, I’ll get to Erie, as long as I don’t drive into the lake…or get stuck in a surprise snow squall. So watch for where to turn, stop before you hit water, make sure your cell phone is charged and bring a coat. The sign (Tarot reading) doesn’t predict anything about our road trip, but it tells you the direction you are headed – good news if you are headed north, but if you wanted to go south, you have a choice to make about how to turn things around.

But that’s the practical side. What, other than facing our fear of it, is the value of the unknown? Is there one?

I think the mysterious and unknown is our portal to spirituality.

That is how I define spirituality, in fact. Spirituality is how we, as individuals deal with and engage with the inevitable, inexorable mysteries of existence. It is the diametrical opposite of religion. Religion is external, dogmatically seeking to make mysterious knowable even if it is at the cost of authoritarian, exclusionary, judgmental thinking. Spirituality makes the unknowable – not into the knowable – but into our friend.

It is ok not to know everything or have easy answers to everything. If the journey is more important than the destination, then the contemplation of the mysterious is more important than the comprehension of it.

I make meditation beads. I made one for myself recently. I have no idea how many beads are on it. I just strung however many beads were in that loose package. It’s not a size of bead I typically use, so there was no easy guess how many wound up on the strand. I could have counted them, but I chose not to. I could count them now, but I still choose not to. That mala reminds me of the mysterious parts of life. Because it is unknown, but could be, it symbolizes a connection between the known and unknown, the magick and the mundane, the material and the spiritual.

Not knowing is the bridge between the known and unknowable.

It’s OK to not know everything, even if it is a little frightening.

“I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that leads to total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will allow it to flow around me and through me. When the fear has passed, I will turn my minds eye to the path where the fear has gone and only I will remain.”

Dune by Frank Herbert

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: The Cleric Within

Happy October!

Interactive Tarot is easy. Watch the video above, and pick a card. Pause the video if you need more time. Then keep watching to see the reveal. The daily meditation for the card is below.

The free one card digital InkMagick reading by email offer continues on the special offers page (link in the menu)

Animal Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews used with permission

Left: King of Cups. Mr. Andrews associates this card with dragonfly through the eyes. Dragonflies have large compound eyes that are able to detect far greater subtlties of light and color than can human eyes. This guides the dragonfly in navigating its world. In other decks, the King of Cups is also associated with guidance of a different sort. Although the suit of cups is often associated with romance and relationships, in this case it resonates with the alchemy association with the element of water, and in turn with inution. The King of Cups is a mentor, and your cue to look for real-world advice and guidance from someone with more experience. “Get the life hack from someone who knows what they are doing” in other words. BUT there is another thread to this card. Sometime the mentoring is more esoteric. Sometimes this card is a cue that the energies are right to explore spiritual topics like vision quests, spirit guides, guardian angles and so on. Only you and your intiution can tell you. You are your own spirit guide and your own best advisor whether you need to look for practical outer world advice or look inside for your spiritual path. Listen to the cleric within.

Center: Six of Swords, “Dove” Doves are lovely gentle birds, and we are surrounded by them more than you might think. Mourning Doves aren’t afraid of the suburbs or the countryside. Pidgeons are related to doves, and they aren’t afraid of suburbs or cities either one. Heck, I’ve seen those guys take on a bus. Think pidgeon (aka the rock dove.) This is a week to do compassion your own way just like pidgeons do being a dove in their own way. Doctor Who and the “Witches Apprentice” episode comes to mind with its idea of “fierce compassion” Do your spirituality your own way this week. Compassion and contemplation can be done with gusto. The best person to lead that kind of spiritual practice is you. Follow the cleric within.

Right: The Emperor “Eagle” I remember seeing a bald eagle up close at a rehab facility, where the individual could not be returned to the wild because of its injuries. They. Are. Huge. Not a bird to be messed with in a dark alley. Eagles are a good analog for the Emperor card which is about confidence, and utter competance. Here in America, Eagles are associated with freedom, strength, and protection. An innate quality that goes along with those things is the ability to think, and critically evaluate for onself. You are the Emperor of your world within. Trust your own eagle eyes and trust your own ability. This is a good week to learn, and learn confidence in your own ability. You are the emporor of your inner world. Decide for yourself, you are your own chief cleric within.

Happy September!

Second Anniversary website-only free tarot reading offer ends October 31, 2020

It’s actually been two years.

In some ways it seems like two days, in others it seems like two decades, but a couple of years ago I began the process of re-branding Modern Oracle Tarot and the Quirk & Flotsam shop on Etsy under one new name. TaoCraft Tarot officially launched under the new identity on October 31, 2018.

If you have been with me since the before time, and made the trip over from Modern Oracle, thank you. I am well and truly grateful, old friends. I hope you’ll hang in there a little more over the next few posts without getting too awfully bored.

If you have arrived since the 2018 unveiling, welcome new friends. I am grateful for each of you too. There are enough of you that introductions are in order. Starting with “Which Layout Should I Get” some of the posts over the next couple of months will re-introduce the basics of what TaoCraft Tarot is all about. Of course, all of that stuff is always available under the “About” tab at top of the page or in the mobile drop-down menu. Even so, I like to dust it all off and post new, current versions as a pure vanity project. Happy Anniversary to me. I hope it makes you feel more comfortable in this cyberspace. As 2020 enters its final third and we all look forward to 2021 (may all your dumpster fires extinguish) there are two new features to the website compared to last Fall: Live phone readings are back and the website comments are open!

Open, but moderated. Please use the comments to ask anything you like. I’ll answer in the blog and/or social media. I’m still going to protect the energy of TaoCraft’s cyberspace. Any spam or inappropriate comments will be obliterated in a blinding flash of white hot hellfire…I mean….deleted before they appear.

Also, you might want to take a peek at the special offers page. I’d bake an anniversary cake for all of us, but maybe this will suffice instead. Because, you know, cyberspace.

Peace to all-R.

Career Tarot Reading: Three Card Pathway Example

career Tarot reading example

You ask. I read. This is both a general example of how Tarot readings with me generally work, generally speaking. If this reading resonates with you, you are welcome to adopt it as your own. If not, it is after all, well, general.

I hope you’ll visit http://www.TaoCraftTarot.com and follow the blog to get all of the latest videos, special offers, and print-only content including Reiki, meditation, reading suggestions and the occasional off-topic post because it’s my blog and I can do that. Your questions and comments are welcome both here and there. Spam and inappropriate comments will be obliterated in a burst hellfire.

Thank you for watching. Thank you for your subs, shares, likes, blog follows and reading orders. Thank you for being your fabulous self and sharing this time and Tarot.

Q&A: Which layout should I get?

Find your goldilocks zone of price and detail in a Tarot reading.

Decision paralysis is a thing.

I get it all the time when faced with one of those large, delicious sounding Chinese restaurant menus. At the same time, the Zen simplicity of a hibachi restaurant is just as delicious. I like having some choices. I have to follow a special diet, and some super small limited menus present a whole different kind of problem.

Just like menus, there is a sweet spot in the number of cards in a layout, and the number of layout choices available to you.

There are roughly a hoozillion different Tarot card layouts. You can write one for yourself, right now. All you have to do is decide ahead of time what you want each card position to mean, keep that meaning clear in your mind as you lay out the cards, then have at it. While that works great when you are reading for yourself, it can get confusing and intimidating for a new client. Decision paralysis sets in when they are trying to decide on a new reader or which layout to get (especially if it is their very first reading or if they aren’t familiar with Tarot work.)

If you charge per minute, the layout you use doesn’t matter so much. But I feel more comfortable (and I hope my clients do too) with charging per layout. We all know the full cost up front and have a pretty good estimate about how long the session will last in advance. There is no clock watching, no extending minutes, no connection fees, no waiting times, no ambiguity about layout meanings, no pulling card after card to make things run long….or any of the other things that might give psychics and Tarot a shady reputation.

I offer a variety of layouts. It gives you choice without being too overwhelming. I’ve tried to find the just – right “Goldilocks Zone” between choice and decision paralysis.

The layouts are organized two ways, price and detail. The layouts are roughly priced at $5 per card. The larger layouts cost a little more than that because more cards means more complexity and more loose ends to weave together. Larger layouts take more skill and experience to do well.

Based on my skill and 27 years of experience, the largest layout I offer only has 7 cards in it because larger ones beyond that tend to get confusing and contradictory and can muddy the waters as often as they are clarifying. Larger readings tend to lose the forest in trees, and neither of us want a session like that. The $40 seven card layout is the one used in individual sessions and lasts about an hour. It is always available by phone and email too.

On the other extreme, I have a layout of two extremes in 1 card. The one card meditation is just what the name says. On one extreme is a very broad, general idea, a bit of whole-life guidance for you to ponder. On the other extreme, this same one card approach can be laser focused, and quick, pithy update on a question IF you have recently had a longer reading on that question. Whichever context you bring to the reading, the price is right. This $5 reading is the most affordable Tarot insight around as far as I know. Even when in-person services return, this one is only available by email.

In the middle, there are two types of 3 card reading.

The Pathway layout shows the path you are on, simple as that with cards symbolizing lessons from the past, current energies, and ideas to move forward in the most empowered and positive way possible. It is $15, around 20 minutes or so in length, and is perfect for experienced spiritual seekers who just want to check in to make sure they are ‘still on the right path’

Zombie Cat YES or NO is one of my favorites, and also does just exactly what the name implies: it answers any ONE yes-or-no question with a 3 card reading. I do the reading through the “Zombie Cat” persona which gives us a little room for a tiny bit of snark and a dollop of humor. Zombie cat will take any question, he’ll even make it sound like a prediction if you really want him too as long as you realize there is a 50% chance he’ll be DEAD WRONG. Same price as as the 3 card pathway, only available by email.

And two types of 5 card reading

The Seasons of the Year is only available, well, seasonally. Look for it on the special offers offers page and in social media announcements. It has one card as a guidance or theme or meditation for each season of the coming year, no matter what time of year you get the reading done. Then there is a card to symbolize the overarching theme or energy of the whole year. This layout is $30 and is usually available winter solstice through lunar new year.

The Modern Oracle layout is named for my old website. I wrote this layout a long time ago when I first started reading professionally. It is specifically designed to show the path you are on, but another path readily open to you based on your choices. This is the best all-purpose sweet-spot layout of them all and the one I recommend if it your very first reading or if you aren’t sure which one is best. It is the closest thing to a one size fits all layout that I’ve found so far. Also $30, this layout is available both by phone and email.

All email readings are also available in a video recorded form that you can download. I usually use dropbox or youtube private share to send your video file, since they are too large to send as an email attachment.

One card and seven card layouts are available in special keepsake pen and ink (on actual paper sent through the actual mail). These “InkMagick” readings include glyph-like intuitive illustrations that I call “sigil elements” since you are welcome to use them in your own sigil crafting if you choose. Prices as marked, available in the TaoCraftTarotShop on Etsy.

All policies and disclaimers apply to all layouts.

Check back this week for a behind the scenes peek at how any session works, phone, email, or in-person (if we get back to that.) If you would like to see a rough example of how things go, check out the new video about a “career reading” on the TaoCraftTarot YouTube channel.

Today’s Tarot: Moon Companion

Thumbnail created with free Picsart app

Just like in the video – I want to start today with a big thank you. Thank you to everyone who reads the blog, watches on YouTube, or follows on social media. A big thank you to everyone who subscribes to the channel or follows the blog (you can do that by email or in WordPress reader. The buttons are in the right hand column in landscape view or scroll WAY down on mobile)

I want to give an extra big thank you to everyone who leaves comments in either place. It is especially helpful on the video side. If you let me know the kind of Tarot content you want to see, then I can learn how to create it. I’ve been reading Tarot for 27 years and writing a blog about it for over 17 of those years. I’m really, really good at that part of it. There is, however, a learning curve to the video side of things. They don’t cover YouTube in B.S. Med. Sci or Ph.D. Natural Health degrees, so my GenX geezer brain is learning that part on the fly.

Most videos will be pretty short. They were never intended to be more than a companion piece for the blog, just like this post today. The videos enhance the blog by showing the daily readings are generated by a real person with a real Tarot deck doing a real card draw. The blog enhances the video with in depth card interpretations. Intuition communicates differently than how-tos, recipes, and game play-through. I often stop and listen to intuition during a reading in order to do the best possible job for you. That pause is invisible in print, barely noticeable in person, but a small eternity on YouTube. The pause in today’s video was a grand total of six seconds. I allow short pauses on private reading videos, but nobody likes any amount of dead air on YouTube. There are lots of talented speech-to-camera readers out there, but its not my specialty. I’m a distance for individuals specialist, but not a media maven for the masses. Cue the Dr. McCoy voice: Dammit Jim, I’m a writer, not a yootoober!

The pandemic is preventing face to face readings and that whole Stripe debacle is preventing you from a blog subscription that includes individual readings. Screw-em. Let’s do this another way. Let’s use comment questions and blog answers like a giant, slow-motion, ongoing AMA. You ask. I answer. The down side is that the answer is in a public space, with NO expectation of privacy. The up side is that it’s FREE. I benefit from the creative inspiration that your questions bring AND I hope that, once you get a taste of what TaoCraft Tarot readings are like, you’ll want to purchase a private reading or two.

Use the comments below to submit your questions about, well, anything. Comments are moderated, so anything inappropriate or spam will be cursed and obliterated. So just don’t.

Today’s card gives us a good example of the difference between a personalized private reading and the general card readings online. We all look up at the same moon even though our individual thoughts under that shared moonlight are an intensely personal thing. Moonlight carries both a shared and individual experience. Tarot questions can do the same. Your public answer might seem superficial, but it helps other people – you all see the same moon, metaphorically speaking. A private session is more specialized and detailed, just for you like your unique inner experience of looking at the moon, that doesn’t involve anyone else at all.

The moon card is about deep inner spirituality, listening to deeper intuition…which also fits this. Spirit messages are all whispers and moonbeams. A genuine intuitive reading for you as an individual doesn’t make for great social media. I hope you’ll use the AMA, the videos and the website to all decide if I’m the right Tarot reader for you, but I also hope you’ll respect yourself and your inner voice enough to purchase a private session if you think you we are a good match. I can do so much more for you in a private reading than in these media snippets show.