TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot – Page 3 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Go Gestalt

Sometimes the big picture is the best picture.

Sometimes the big picture is the best picture

Hi and welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot Blog and Podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Yay! We made it to September. Consider this place magically totally decorated for Autumn and Halloween just like the internet memes. Because it is officially pumpkin spice season, and because I say so. Cinnamon everything for the next six months!!

Today’s card is The World from the major arcana and it fits the mood. The World is a generally positive card, associated with yes in the really old, complicated ways of doing yes-or-no readings. I’m not burning brain cells on memorizing the yes or no implications for all 78 cards, so I’m sticking with my three stack deal and aces method. It works really well for that kind of reading. Older isn’t always better, even in Tarot.

The world card is a good omen card if you work from a predictive stance. The world is the last of the major arcana cards. The Fool is the first card and has come to be associated with new beginnings. In much the same way, the World card connotes happy endings. I’ve always associated it with that saying “the world is your oyster.” The interwebs say the phrase originated with Shakespeare and signifies life giving riches and good things like an oyster produces a pearl. I’m guessing that it might also hint that you are able to make good things happen for yourself no matter what life throws at you just like an oyster makes a pearl out of a grain of sand. That idea in turn resonates with that whole make lemonade out of lemons thing. Put all of those impressions together, and today seems to be a good day to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps despite this avalanche of homespun aphorisms and be confident about it because energies are flowing toward a good outcome if you do.

Looking at life through the biggest of big pictures is a way to help you to create that good outcome, it seems.

German must be a fun language. Part of me wants to learn it, but the part of me that dislikes noun gender tends to win that debate. Still the German language has given us some pretty cool words, like geshundheit to say for sneezes, schadenfreude for when political tea is spilled, Reinheitsgebot for their beer purity laws and the one that always makes me giggle like a 12 year old – krankenwagen for an ambulance.

Gestalt is another useful German word. According to the Google machine, gestalt literally translates as “shape” As it relates to the World card, however, it is more like the gestalt branch of psychology and psychotherapy. In a shorthand sort of way, it is about understanding the shape of things. I think of it as starting from the biggest big picture point of view that you can muster, then see how everything fits together into that – if you will pardon the pun – world view. It’s no surprise that gestalt and wholeness have been added to contemporary meanings for the World card.

When the World card turns up in a reading, consider it a good omen and a sign of a happy conclusion on the way. If that doesn’t fit then consider it a reminder to keep the big picture in mind. Look at how all the pieces fit together. Look at the whole forest, not just one bothersome tree.

Which is why astronaut Ron Garan’s The Orbital Perspective is on my enormous want-to-read list. I’m a gestalt kind of gal. The more I see and understand the big picture the better I like it. That is also why I would urge all of you to read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

Problems shrink when you stack them next to the whole world.

Thank you so much for listening and reading. I appreciate you for doing that. I’d also appreciate any follows, likes, subs, shares, questions or comments that you can spare.

The blog and podcast are not monetized in any way and totally rely on your support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi.com (it sounds like no fee or coffee) Proceeds from the virtual coffees, shop purchases, private readings and exclusive content memberships all help me to create these free to access Tarot readings for everyone.

Thank you again, and I’ll see you at the next sip.

Ugh – you again

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Want a personalized sip? They are available, in the no appointment needed email readings.

Sometimes apathy is an accomplishment.

Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

This card again. Ugh.

I don’t know if this is true of all professional readers, but I have a couple of cards that are my arch nemesis. They poke a bony finger at old sensitive scars and rub salt in spots that still aren’t all they could be. For me, the hierophant is defininitely one of those nemesis cards, if not THE nemesis card. It isn’t clinically correct, but a common, understandable way to say it that this bad boy is triggering.

Or you could say it is a pain in the ass. Either one works for me.

Either one is Tarot at its best doing its best thing. Tarot really isn’t about blowing happy smoke up your aura or making you feel good. It is about holding a mirror up to what we are doing in life at the same time it is giving context to the nonsense. Sure, Tarot inspires and empowers, but that is only part of it. Sometimes part of the healing, helping, inspiring and empowering process is to challenge us.

A good friend will tell you when your zipper is down or there is spinach stuck in your teeth. Tarot is a good friend. Both best friends and Tarot decks are truth tellers and support systems all rolled into one.

It is standard issue boiler plate advice that when a Tarot card keeps turning up in a reading that it signifies a lesson that we haven’t learned, an aspect of life that keeps coming around until we finally deal with it in the right way.

I wonder if it isn’t part desensitization therapy too. I don’t know if this is legit, or if it is a disproven trope, but at one point people would manage specific phobias, flying for example, by gradually increasing small exposures to the thing that triggered their anxiety until they were inured enough to the trigger that it wasn’t a problem anymore. In other words, repeated exposure helped them let go of the fear inducing thing by repeating the thing until they were just sick and tired and totally over it.

That’s kind of how I feel about the Hierophant today. I wonder, what card or what issue in life are all of you completely over? The religious imagery and symbolism in the Pamela Smith artwork for the RWS deck isn’t trigger-y for everyone, but to my minds it begs the question: What is your personal IDGAF totally over it topic today?

Whatever it is, celebrate your accomplishment of attaining a state of apathy. Celebrate your apathy about that thing that used to send you up a wall and over an edge, whatever that is for you individually. If you can’t think of anything like that, then it may just not be the right time for you to take on your triggers. Or maybe you are one of the fortunate ones who don’t have a nemesis card or maybe you just don’t need this message today. Either way, it’s all good. Despite what the dogmatic religious folk might think, nature is unfolding as it should.

If it does apply, however, enjoy your apathy. You’ve earned it.

Thanks so much for reading and listening! Any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments you can spare is much appreciated. I’d also appreciate it if you’d take a look at the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page where the exclusive content memberships, shop purchases, private email Tarot readings, and virtual coffees all help me create these non-monetized, free to access (almost) daily Tarot readings for you.

Enjoy your weekend. Next sip comes Monday. See you then!

Manufacture

Moderation manufactures money.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip – Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Thank you for reading and listening. I appreciate it.

Today’s card is the 4 of pentacles. It is an interesting dichotomy of meanings. On one hand it has been associated with penny-pinching, or being selfish or miserly in a bad kind of way. Other times it has been associated with protectiveness, guarding a secret treasure, or found fortune. But before you run out and buy a lottery ticket, “found fortune” can mean a forgotten dollar bill in your jacket pocket from last winter.

When a card has two seemingly separate threads of meaning associated with it like this, often the energy of the day will pick one or the other. One aspect or key word about the card will light or step forward compared to the others. Today is a little different in that respect. This very much has a combination of both vibe.

Guarding what you have is a way to find a secret treasure. Ben Franklin made the idea famous in his “a penny saved is a penny earned” aphorism. A little delayed gratification now can open the door to unexpected satisfactions.

Another way of saying it is to ask if what you want is really what you want. That thing, that trip, that whatever-it-is, are you after that specific thing or some aspect of it that is already at hand?

It is an old idea from the Tao Te Ching, too. It tells us “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

This all isn’t to say you should make yourself miserable and be so stingy it makes Mr. Scrooge blush. Live. Live happy. Live with what you have. Put your energy into that and it turns into found fortune. Focus on what you don’t have, and you in essence lose it all. Moderation is, as always, key. A little shift in perception can change everything.

Today, the four of pentacles is reminding us that minding what we already have manufactures money, both in the sense of preserving those resources and in the sense of shifting mental perception in that Tao Te Ching way that makes the world already belong to you.

None of this is ad-monetized so your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. All of the shop purchases, exclusive content memberships, no appointment private reading commissions, and virtual coffees all contribute toward the creation of this free blog and podcast for everyone. Thank you for your help. Likes, follows, shares, questions and comments are also very appreciated.

Thank you again for reading and listening. See you at the next sip!

Sight

You don’t just see with your heart. Look with your heart and you see with compassion.

There are many ways to see, including with your heart.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate it.

I still haven’t done the review I wanted to write for the blog, but I wanted to get my hands back on the Alleyman’s Tarot deck today. Today’s energy wanted to speak through this particular card it seems. It’s the ten of eyes, a card from the strange suit, some of the non-standard cards that are part of the Alleyman deck’s genius. It was originally drawn by Bobby Abate for the Outsider Tarot deck. My read today differs from the meaning given in the guidebook – but you’ll have that. Guide books are important. They provide context, intent, and inspiration. In the lore Seven Dane Asmund created around the deck, the Alleyman wrote his own guidebook with notes on this own organically mismatched deck. In essence, that is what intuitive style readers do all the time. We write each card meaning in the moment guided by energy and insight that changes day by day, sometimes hour by hour. To call a Tarot reading ephemeral folk art is an understatement, but it’s the best descriptor I know for the actual process.

But back to the Ten of Eyes.

Like almost all cards, this one has multiple threads of meaning, and it is up to pure intuition to see which thread best resonates with the current energy environment.

At first glance, this could be read like the ten of pentacles or ten of coins just superficially based on the round shapes. That could connect with the aspect of the Waite Smith Ten of Pentacles that has to do with our greatest treasures being the intangible ones that money can never buy. The ten eyes could conceivably see through physical wealth to those invaluable intangibles.

The image on this card doesn’t really reflect the super-happy good outcome vibe that goes with the classic Smith art and the ten of coins however.

The Alleyman’s guide interprets it as, essentially, doom scrolling.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a hot cup of “I told you so” flavored schadenfreude as much as the next person. Especially with the great American political dumpster fire of twenty aught fifteen to the present day. Everybody loves to see the bad guys get theirs, both in fiction and in politics. But it can be taken to extreme. The Ten of Eyes is a cautionary tale, to not let news get to you personally. USE the information, yes, but don’t let it change you or affect you. Don’t let information make you bleed out of the eyes as the movie and anime trope goes.

The message I’m getting today differs from both of these. The message has come through before, but I don’t remember when or which card.

Look with your heart.

The part of this card that most catches my attention is the sheer number of eyes.

So.

Many.

Eyes.

Intuition and mental clairvoyance is often represented by the so-called third eye. I think we have other eyes too. There are the physical ones, of course, for our literal sight. The third eye speaks to intuition and mental images. That is mind-sight. But what of emotional or spiritual sight?

Often intuition is conflated with spirituality, but intuition serves us all no matter what our spiritual framework may be. Raging egos and scam artists can still be psychic to some degree. Intuition is a normal human faculty that could arguably had evolutionary advantage. I like Neil Degrasse Tysons description of the sixth sense and exactly that. A functional, purposeful, useful function of human existence like, I believe it was his grandmother, who know just when to propare supper and how many places to set even without tangible, five-sense knowable input.

The heart governs both physical and mental sight with emotional and spiritual sight. Look with your heart and see both physical and mental inputs through a lens of compassion and kindness. That guides not so much what we see but what we do about what we see, what we know, what we learn, and all the information we take in about our world.

So go ahead. Doom scroll. Sip that schadenfreude. Unleash all of your glorious human curiosity on whatever is out there. Gaze upon the world but be aware of the filters you (and other people) place on what you see. Then filter that through the one lens that really counts – kindness.

I hope you are enjoying these (almost) daily Tarot contemplations that happen in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

It’s that renew-the-website time of year, so any support you can give through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi is greatly, appreciated. Shop purchases, exclusive content memberships, private reading commissions and virtual coffees all contribute toward making this blog and podcast possible.

No appointment is needed for private email readings, which are my specialty by the way.

Thank you again.

See you at the next sip!

Quaff

Today is a new opportunity. Drink deeply.

Hello and welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Water is life.

Literally.

Today’s card is the Ace of Cups. Aces are said to hold the essence of their suit. In this case, it is closely tied to water, intuition, romantic relationships, or all close relationships, really. I can’t say there are uncountable metaphors for cups and water, but there are a lot of them.

Sometimes ace cards, being the first card of the suit, carry a little bit of new-beginning energy. It isn’t the full new start, the very beginning of the beginning that you would see with the Fool card from the major arcana, but aces can be symbolic of a new beginning or a fresh start within an established project or ongoing process or stage of life. That is the energy that is coming with the card today.

Every day is a fresh start. Heck, every moment can be a fresh start if you need it to be.

Have you ever had a big drink of water? I’m not talking about a tall glass of ice water that you sip with a meal, I’m talking about a big, deep, fill-your-belly big drink of water. Like a kid in the summer drinking from the garden hose drink of water. It’s a satisfying kind of experience. Try it sometime if you don’t remember the sensation. Nothing extreme, just … satisfying.

It’s harmless enough of a thing. We all can use with a little extra hydration sometimes.

Tarot cards are literally just pieces of paper. There isn’t hard science behind it, but besides the famous Bruce Lee interview, there is an esoteric connection between water and subtle energy. A big drink of room temperature spring or filtered water is essential for both clients and practitioners after a Reiki session. Kneipp water therapy evolved as an extant healing system in late nineteenth century Europe. In addition to similar spas and soaks, Japanese custom and traditional medicine uses water drinking on an empty stomach and timed eating to help digestion, with a variety of unproven health benefits.

Taking a deep drink has literal and symbolic benefit.

Today is a new day, a new opportunity. Quaff it. Drink deeply from this opportunity. What you drink of? What is it that you drink in deeply? Water? Wine? Your own happiness.

Today is an opportunity. Today is an opportunity to drink deeply of health and happiness.

Cheers!

Thank you so much for reading and listening. Any likes, follows, shares, questions or comments you can spare are always appreciated. Nothing here is monetized, so any support you can give through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi is essential to bringing these free Tarot readings to everyone. Thank you for your attention and your support.

See you at the next sip!

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Spinoza’s Peacefulness

The Justice card and Spinoza’s peacefulness.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect a lady with a sword to be talking about a peaceful state of mind, but there it is.

Hello and welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Justice card from the major arcana.

At first blush this card has all of the usual admonishments to wisdom, fairness, balance and, well, justice. I was listening to news updates a few minutes ago, so of course all the current politics is top of mind as I saw the card.

But I am also reminded of a slightly older current event. Here in the United States, judges on the supreme court are called justices. The senate confirmation hearings for the newest justice, Kitanji Jackson, were publically broadcast and nerd that I am, I watched them. At least sort of. If I’m not listening to music, have a habit of letting the news play in the background during the day. Yes, it is a lot of repetition but enough bits and pieces make it through my foggy inattention to stitch together a picture of the day’s events. During the confirmation hearings, Justice Jackson said something about her early work as a defense lawyer that landed in my brain with a thud and has been there ever since. It was interesting on level because it was an epiphany out of context, an ah-ha moment apropos to nothing I was actually doing at the moment. It was interesting because it was an epiphany. I’d always suffered under the wrong understanding. She disabused the nation and history of that misunderstanding in a handful of sentences.

Defense lawyers.

Like many other people, I always had the vague impression they defended the criminal or the crime, in other words advocating for the wrong side.

Nope.

Defense lawyers defend the criminal’s civil liberties, not the crime. They protect the constitution and equal justice under law and the principle of innocent until proven guilty. THAT is what they were defending.

Of course in my brain, there is a cut scene right to Jim Carry’s character in the movie Liar, Liar where he screams legal advice over the phone to his most recalcitrant client and tells him to “STOP BREAKING THE LAW!”

It is an interesting, complex balance between protecting innocent society from criminal behavior and protecting equal justice from the very system that claims to have created that self-same equal justice.

All of which begs the question: what on earth does any of this have to do with a Tarot reading?

I have a hunch that this high-minded esoteric kind of thinking is why the Justice card has a reputation for presaging a fair and correct decision in any literal legal proceedings, especially in the prediction-oriented days of Tarot readings.

A number of readers comment on the similarities between images on the Justice card and on the High Priestess card. Justice is thought to be worldly while the High Priestess is of course purely spiritual. That last Sage & Stuff post about Venn diagrams might hold a clue for us today. With the similar visuals, what is the conceptual overlap between the cards?

Wisdom.

The High Priestess deals with mystery and esoterica while Justice is faced with nitty gritty action within the real world. Both act from a place of great wisdom, but move in different directions. One is wisdom drawn from ineffable mystery the other is wisdom applied to implacable reality and practicality.

As Baruch Spinoza reminds us, justice, wisdom and indeed peace all go hand in hand when he says “peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence and justice.”

Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate any likes, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare. The blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where memberships, shop purchases, commissioned private email tarot readings and virtual coffees all support the creation of these (almost) daily Tarot readings for you.

Thank you again. See you at the next sip!

Work it

Stop

If you don’t stop, life will stop you.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

This is one of those days when Tarot proves it is just a tool, an amplifier, a sort of google translate for our natural inner intuition.

Swords are the element of air, intellect, mind and our relationship with authority and our relationship with culture and society at large.

When I turned the card this morning, the clairvoyant mental images were much stronger than the usual keywords for the card.

I giant red stop sign sprang to mind, along with those running obstacle course video games, like Mario Brothers, Temple Run or Fall Guys. Believe it or not, there is strategy and timing to the games. If you just run flat out fast as you can go start to finish you often don’t finish at all. Especially with swinging obstacles back in the day. You’d have to pause between the swinging things and get the timing so you are not knocked over the edge.

Taking a pause to get your timing right is a real world life hack too.

Many long years in the before time, before stress management and the mind-body connection were as normalized as they are now, it was still recognized that pushing too far was a thing. Students were learning their limits and it was easy in our ambition to leave those limits in the dust.

If you don’t stop, life will stop you.

Luckily, for the majority of us that stopping consisted of a walloping flu or bronchitis or something, but more serious consequences happened too. Books and entire tv dramas could be written, and have, but that is beside the point here. The Eight of Swords is here today to let us know that the stopping happens in whatever form it may take for you as an individual.

Most often when the eight of swords comes around, it reminds us of creative problem solving. Usually it draws my attention to the figure’s unbound feet, and that other senses can lead to freedom despite the obstacles ropes and blindfold and swords.

Today the energy moves one step earlier. Instead of encouraging persistence and creative problem solving, today’s eight of swords begs the question of why was this person tossed in sword jail in the first place?

Ambition and action and effort are all necessary to success, but you can’t make any forward progress when your battery is drained.

Psychoneuroimmunology is a thing. Stress, be it physical, psychological or both, can ding your immune system and open you to a common cold or flu that will slow you down when you don’t have the good sense to do it yourself before you get sick.

Before someone goes all Karen Q. Ivermectin on me, I’m talking about run of the mill take a nap level stuff, not the cure for covid. The suit of swords asks you to use your head, and so do I. They symbolize air and intellect, remember?

But again, the eight of swords is here today to tell us to stop a minute. Listen to your stress levels. Listen to what you mind, body and spirit need. Listen, and for goodness’ sake don’t ignore what you hear. Give your life what it needs. Give yourself what you are asking for. Stop if you needed so life doesn’t have to do the stopping for you.

Thank you all for reading and listening. I appreciate you! I also appreciate any likes, subs, shares, questions or comments.

I’ve opened the comments on the blog, and invited ko-fi members to pick the cut for the short sip readings in the month of September. When I draw each short sip card (you can see the video of the real world short sip card draw on the TaoCraft Tarot youtube channel or here on the blog. The blog link is in the show description for podcast listeners. If I don’t get a majority from the ko-fi members, you all get the chance to chime in. Choose between left, right or center and leave your choice in the blog comments and that is the cut of the deck I’ll use for short sip readings in September. To become a Patron of the Tarot arts, and get access to exclusive Tarot content, shop discounts, private readings and more please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi or click the link in the episode description. Private readings are available to order in the commissions menu if you aren’t interested in the monthly membership part of it. Proceeds from the ko-fi page contribute toward the creation of this blog, podcast and the free-for-everyone Tarot content.

Thanks again. I’ll see you at the next sip!

Unbroken

You can’t fix what isn’t broken.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the queen of cups. Queens represent a nurturing, caretaking sort of leadership. The suit of cups is associated with the element of water, with emotions and with our closest circle of relationship. Most of the time this card seems to point to deep inner knowing that requires a quieting of emotions to reach. The queen’s gaze into the cup is said to symbolize plumbing the depths of human emotion and our subconscious psyche for important guidance and answers to life’s dilemmas.

But like every card, the queen of cups has strings of keywords and connotations that have been attached to it over time. Psychic ability is one of those common associations, but that is the opposite side of the world from today’s energy.

Today is more about calm and clarity and a sense of emotional harmony. Today is focused on the prerequisites for intuition, not psychic ability itself.

“Emotional healing” is another of those accumulated key concepts for the card. I see a problem with the whole notion of “emotional healing.” The word healing implies that healing is needed. It implies that emotions can be somehow broken or diseased, literally ill-at-ease.

But, on the other hand, just because an emotion is difficult doesn’t make it dysfunctional, broken or wrong.

You can’t fix what isn’t broken. You can’t heal that which is already healthy.

The emotion itself isn’t the problem. Our relationship with that emotion, however, can become broken and problematic. Giving old trauma or future outsized control over our present moment can be one such problem. Expressing honest emotion in unhealthy ways is another. It’s normal to be afraid in frightening situations. It is normal to worry about risk when it exists. It is normal to feel regret, sadness, grief, and feel the entire spectrum of emotion. What you do with those normal natural emotions is the key of it, not the feelings that naturally bubble up.

There is a serene quality around the Queen of Cups card. It reminds me of the example from the Tao Te Ching. Stirring muddy water or trying to see through muddy water doesn’t really help much. But if you wait…if you abide with the muddiness and let it be what it is…then with a little time the mud will naturally settle and things will become clearer and better again.

Difficult emotions are what they are just like muddy water is what it is. Sit with them as they are, and they will settle as sure as gravity pulls the mud from water. The emotions are what they are. The healing comes from how we relate to them.

Here I am reminded of Dharma Drum Mountain, a Chan Buddhist education center in Taiwan and their website where they offer this strategy for dealing with problems in the 21st century:

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

This card suggests that this strategy for dealing with problems might be a good strategy for a healthy relationship with our normal, day to day emotions

I shouldn’t have to end this post with a disclaimer, but times being what they are, it’s necessary. Tarot has no place in medical or mental health care. I’m in no way talking about real illnesses. This isn’t about clinical depression or anxiety disorder or any other genuine mental health concern. This blog, podcast, and Tarot writ large is a tool for growth and for day to day stress management. Tarot is a normal natural way to do that. Getting real mental health help if and when you need is a normal, natural thing to do too.

It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to be ok too. Heal what needs healed, and abide in peace with that which is unbroken.

Thank you so much for listening. TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. If you enjoy these (almost) daily Tarot readings and the other Tarot content please support this work through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where you can be a Patron of the Tarot Arts and receive exclusive access to members only content, tarot how-to, special offers and more. Links are in the episode description for podcast listeners.

Thank you again. See you at the next sip!

Homecoming

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

There is something to be said for comfort zones.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

It’s been a deeply weird couple of weeks. The hiatus I had hoped to take this week is pushed back until probably mid-September, because of life and stuff. We are back to the usual pattern for a little while, and we are back to the Alleyman’s Tarot. I know I keep saying this, but this card, “The Alley” by deck creator Seven Dane Asmund, truly is my favorite right now. This may be my cue to set aside the deck for daily short sip posts and write a proper, deep-dive review. I wanted to live with the deck and use it and post with it for a while before writing about it to any extent. This is something special, and deserves more than the usual hot take unboxing first look review. I could rant a paragraph about the visual of this card, all night and neon and cyberpunk and Neuromancer. Good book,that. I highly recommend it.

This card in particular landed right in my personal wheelhouse. I hope it speaks to you, too, but it is saying a lot to me. I hope you forgive this little bit of personal indulgence and a post that pays no attention to the outward, zeitgeist energy landscape.

Landscape is a good word here. The Alley card is important to the lore and backstory of the deck. The Alley is where the Alleyman lives out his life’s calling, where he finds his raison d’etre, so wrapped in his comfort zone that it becomes an extension of self more than mere solace. It speaks of our native landscape. By native I mean our most natural, most authentic environment, not necessarily the one of our biological birth.

I’m enjoying that music is available to put on YouTube shorts, TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. For once you get to “hear” what I intuitively heard with this card.

When I say the word “hear” in the context of a Tarot reading, I mean clairaudience. You’ve heard the word clairvoyant, right? That means clear seeing, and it talks about intuitive mental images. Clairaudience is “clear hearing” and it the word for when intuition comes as sounds, music or words instead of mental images. It uses auditory imagination to the same purpose as visual imagination in a reading. It is like ear worming a favorite song, except that it isn’t your song. It is meant for your client or as something you’ve both heard before to help you find a mutual point of reference as you talk through the Tarot reading. In this case it is a bit of both. “You Belong to the City” by Glen Frey came through intuitively and it was also one of my favorites back in the day.

It was inspiration to challenge my comfort zone and find my homecoming.

Seven Dane Asmund writes of the card as quote “my community” and “where everything belongs if there is nowhere else to be or go.” End Quote.

Another song came to mind. It is from the same era, “A Sort of Homecoming” by U2. Put all of this together and I think we get the essential message that we each define our home and homecoming. Just like the old adage that home is where the heart is.

It is a card of finding your natural habitat, whatever it may be. I floundered and felt profoundly misfit in the place where I was raised. It was a bath in itching powder. Suburbia was a warm sunset. Even for an introvert, there is life and light and energy to be found. I belong to the city at its edge.

For some, a foray into a city at night is an exciting adventure. For some – like my rural evangelical birth family – it would be intimidating, or even terrifying. More importantly, for many others, it is every night, it is life, it is home.

To state the overly obvious, a lot of people are born in cities. Being at home there would be the norm. The Alley card is outside of that ordinary. It speaks to me of found family and a found home, a liminal space even within a familiar urban environment. It is a place to belong when you’ve walked away from the places where you don’t.

I wonder if the Alley here can also hint at our shadow side, the unclaimed self. If you feel drawn to this card today, what alleyway lurks within? What dark and liminal space within you is calling to you to befriend it. What dark alley is inviting you home? Is your inner alleyway one that others fear but you know to be filled with shelter and neon light and other wandering spiritual orphans just like you? Urban neon may frighten some, but it is homecoming for others.

Seek your unique kind of light, the kind that makes the dark night into your own neon homecoming.