TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. We sip again Monday.
Hello and welcome to a very short sip of Tarot. I’m glad you are here.
I mostly just want to say have a happy weekend. My intentions are to be back on the usual Monday through Friday for Short Sip Blog to podcast posts. I hope you will follow the blog as a well as the podcast. The plan is to post some fall plans so the Squirrel rave can proceed to put it all into this blender of circumstances we call life.
Today’s Tarot card is the Page of Cups. It’s one of my favorites, particularly when the art follows the Pixie Smith motif of dude on the beach with a fish in a cup. Life is just that odd sometimes.
Fish in a cup? Cheers.
Not saying I would drink live fishwater. I am saying, however, sometimes it pays to embrace the oddity of it. Some days, or some weeks call for us to dig deep and channel our inner Dude with all of the housecoat and flip-flop-ness that we can muster.
Just because we are being mindful of the present moment, just because we are abiding with it, doesn’t mean we can’t laugh at it outright.
I think we make this mistake too much in America. Spiritual and important are conflated with dour, serious, somber, wet blankets.
Spirituality is lighthearted. Spirituality embraces all that being a human embraces and that includes laughter and fun.
Think of Dan Millman’s “laughter of the enlightened man.” Think of Lama Surya Das’ instagram feed. I highly recommend the “Friday funnies” from the “jolly lama” as he puts it.
With that, I leave you to your weekend. Whatever fish comes in that cup, I hope it makes you smile.
The Devil card reminds us to guard our energies, pay attention to the gate and know your nemesis.
No.
Nope.
Wrong address. Try again.
Sorry, no.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today I’m back to the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. Today’s card is the Devil from the major arcana. This card is clearly based on the classic Pamela Smith art. I’m curious to see what the Alleyman’s guide has to say about it and who this artist is, but first let’s talk about the energy that this little effer is spontaneously resonating with this morning: I’m getting both “guard your energy” and “know your nemesis”
And yes, I am very deliberately and specifically using the word resonating.
Energy resonance is important to both of threads of the message coming through the Devil card today.
Even though I say a message is “coming through” a particular card, I don’t want you to get the idea that the cards are a portal for spirits like something out of horror movies or 1970s TV.Our language tends to anthropomorphize things like this, but in reality they are pieces of paper with pictures on them. Tarot cards, ouija boards, rune stones, I ching coins, chicken bones…all the divination and oracle whatevers…are all simply amplifiers for our own inner, innate intuition.
Anyway, here is where the message starts to scatter into different directions. The starting point about resonance has to do with that portal for spirits vs intuition amplifier piece of it. I hear “guard your energy. “
The Devil card isn’t a happy card. It is as much of a majority-dark card as the Sun card is majority-light. The Devil card is a good card in that it serves as an important, real-talk reminder that there are indeed harmful things that exist in the universe.
When I say “hear” I mean that the intuition comes as words, sounds or music instead of mental images. In this case, I hear “don’t invite in” as in don’t think of Tarot cards as a portal to invite energies in for a personal visit. Use them like hearing aids to better listen in to what the universal energies are broadcasting for us all to hear.
It doesn’t matter what the energy seems to be. Sure, give it a listen but then make your own decision about it and don’t “invite it in.” We’ve all heard about the devils in disguise or wolves in sheep’s clothing. That can go for anything. That born-again christian thing about “invite jesus into your heart” is red lights and sirens four alarm emergency creeping heebie jeebies level stuff. Don’t invite other people’s definition of good into your heart of hearts any more than you would invite other people’s definition of evil. The only thing that deserves to be in there is your own light, love, compassion and all the wonderful things that you already are.
The best way to guard your energy is to up its wattage. I forget where I heard this example, but think of a cozy, warm, well lit house on a cold winter night. If you open the front door, does the cold and dark come in or does the light and warm spill out? The Devil card is the weather report. Our responsibility in that dark night is to close the door and save on the heating bill.
That’s one thread.
The other is akin to Socrates telling us to “know thyself.” It also came through as “the phone call is coming from inside the house.” I’ve never seen the movie that is from, but I have heard it referenced a lot. This goes back to the empathy check we’ve talked about in the past. Especially when you are reading cards or doing any sort of psychic work, It pays to stop and pay attention every now and then and ask yourself if what you are feeling is your emotion alone (which is perfectly OK, whatever that feeling may be) OR are you just empathically resonating with the zeitgeist energy or group of people around you. An easy visualization for that is to imagine a force field, light or being surrounded by your favorite protective crystal or symbol. Just for a minute, let that visualization shut out the resonance and outer noise and listen. In that quiet, protected space that you’ve imagined up for yourself, what do you feel? What are the conditions inside your protective bubble compared to how they were before?
And what do you do if they are the same?
What if the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak?
I’m reminded of a couple of more quotes. Sun Tzu in The Art of War tells us “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Know your enemy and know yourself, you say? What if they are both the same?
So know your nemesis. Is there a real world threat, is what you are feeling resonance with external energies, or is the enemy within the gates?
This particular Devil card is very similar to Pamela Smith’s 1909 rendition, but it differs in a couple of ways that I think are significant.
Most notably the chained figures and the monolith they are chained to are all proportionally larger compared to the Baphomet / Devil figure on top. The face on the monolith particularly captures my attention. There is so much here.
Are you the one holding yourself prisoner? Are you your nemesis? Are you the one inside the house making scary phone calls?
Only you can defeat that nemesis.
It also brings me back to where I started with this card this morning. In true Taoist style we remember that when there is resonance there is also dissonance. If there is no enemy within, then the gate is rattling from the vibe outside of it. As Winston Churchill said, “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
When it comes to Tarot readings and professional psychic work like this, sometimes the enemy at the gate has the wrong address. This is a consideration particular to anyone who is thinking about taking on the onus of reading for other people.
Sometimes the energy at the gate isn’t yours at all. Resonance to a degree, for sure, but less of a general zeitgeist energy but an energy that is directed toward a particular client – or in this case, a particular audience. I suspect that is where all the “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…” posts on social media comes from.
That is where I am with this card today. Zero personal resonance. I am so not in a place to work with the Devil card. Still here is this message that the Tarot muses want delivered. So here we are, paragraphs into this card reading, done with the hope that it helps someone somewhere out there in cyberspace.
I hate to say it as “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…”
It always gets my hackles up when people say that. It strikes me as a bit egotistical. Ego. Now THAT is the inner nemesis of a good professional psychic. Maybe nobody needs to hear any damn thing we say, and we need to stay cognizant of that little fact. Overblown ego is a warning sign of a grifter or a sincere psychic who is struggling a bit with their own spiritual growth. Know your limits folks. All this talk about guarding your energies, guarding your boundaries, asking for help if needed and taking time to heal goes double if you read for others as an amateur, times ten if you work professionally. I think dissonance, not resonance, is the process behind the “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…” trope. That sounds like a message you’ve been entrusted to deliver, BUT it doesn’t resonate either personally or with general energies.
I’m not sure how to say it any better, but there has to be something a little more down to earth, something a little more along the lines of “for your consideration, take or leave it as you like, but this message delivery is not for me.
Nope.
Wrong address.
Sorry, try again later.
If this sparks an idea for you, great. If not, that’s cool too. There is big, clear energy with this card, but it’s 100% not for me today.
I just finished a big project that I’ll be talking more about in September. For now I’m going to go sip some iced coffee and go into self care mode for the rest of the day.
Before I forget….this is the second of two Devil cards in the Alleyman’s deck. I just read the guidebook and it talks about not owning up to your inner desires as opposed to projecting them onto other people or onto your circumstances. I guess I was in that ballpark with minding boundaries and inner awareness and all that. The artist for this card is I.S.N.Y.R. It puts a focus on the “temptation” version of the classic Devil image rather than the “evil in the world” aspect which differentiates the card from the desire aspect of the Lovers card. Hmm, maybe I should read that part of the book too. Or maybe this is my cue to sit down, read the guide book and be done with this my interpretation then theirs motif. Seven Dane Asmund of Publishing Goblin, LLC wrote the guidebook and created the Alleyman’s Tarot and is used here with permission from back in the early days of the kickstarter. I am so grateful for that! Whether a short sip or a long quaffe, this deck really is elevating my Tarot skills even after all of these years. This thing really is the Stradavarious of Tarot decks.
Just a reminder that all things TaoCraft will be taking a short hiatus mid August. Probably around the 16th to the 20th give or take a little.
Meanwhile, think you so much for listening! I appreciate you.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Some days flow beats fight.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Of all the meanings for the Two of Pentacles, adaptability and to a lesser degree multitasking are grabbing my attention.
That brings me back to the same image and analogy that always seems to come with the two of pentacles: dynamic equalibrium.
Pentacles brings the card into the practical real world realm of things. The two card of a suit almost always points to a balance of some sort. Most of the time a unicycle comes to mind. Most of us have seen a clown or performer on a unicycle at some point in our lives, at least on YouTube or TV. We get it how they make those constant small back and forth adjustments with the wheel to keep their balance. When we see it the process is understandable whether we could actually do it ourselves or not.
Today, my science geek intuition takes me back to high school chemistry and dynamic equilibrium across a semipermeable membrane, which isn’t nearly as entertaining of a mental image as a clown on a unicycle juggling bowling pins. But you’ll have that.
I think there is a reason for the nerdiness. It adds an, ahem, counterbalance, to the notion of dynamic equilibrium.
Rigidity isn’t as successful as adaptability.
The whole science thing is about two solutions on either side of a membrane that lets the -oh, let’s say salt molecules – cross the membrane. The water molecules are the same on either side of the membrane – oh, let’s say it is a bag. Imaging a plastic zip bag filled with way too concentrated salt water, sealed and plunked down in a big bowl of plain water. Imagine your goal is to season your water for cooking pasta. You don’t want just plain water, or your spaghetti will taste pasty and bland. Too much salt and you can’t even choke it down.
If the bag of salt water allows salt through, eventually molecular movement will let the salt adapt to the total amount of water and boom…good spaghetti. But if the bag isn’t adaptable enough to allow that salt through…no go with the pasta water. Same with our metaphoric clown. If he is too rigid and doesn’t move his unicycle wheel to adapt his balance then boom…clown down. Movement and adaptation is needed on both obvious and subtle levels to be successful.
Whether it comes from Charles Darwin, H.G. Wells or a Brad Pitt movie, “adapt or die” is the message here.
It isn’t the energy for every day or every situation. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stand your ground and protect those you love who stand behind you.
Other days, it pays to let water roll off the hill rather than plant your flag on it. Today’s energy asks for adaptability and gives us a list of quotes to back it up:
Adam Savage is quoted as saying “follow the process, not the plan” Do what you know works, even if that wasn’t the original plan.
Bruce Lee famously said “Be water, my friend” Today is a day for water that adopts the shape of its teapot. A drop of water falling from a cave ceiling changes it shape to match the contours of the cave floor, but over millennia it builds an immovable column of stalagmite rock.
A little adaptability now can show you the way to success later.
Thank you so much for reading and listening!
I’ll be going on another short summer hiatus in the middle of August so please stay tuned to the blog for more detail. Private email readings and everything is open and available, the same as always until then.
Thank you for supporting the blog & podcast with likes, subs, shares, follows and of your questions and comments. The TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi also supports the production of these free to access Tarot readings.
TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Many long years in the before time, a wise man spoke.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
A lifetime and a half ago, I used to work in health care. How we got from there to Tarot blog & podcast is another story for another day. When I was a student, I was very lucky to do my ER rotation with a Canadian doctor who used to work in a very rural, northern part of the country. He was a private pilot and literally flew from one remote clinic to another to provide basic, general practice health care. Here in the land of bankruptcy prices, brainless shotgun labs and cookbook internal medicine, his expertise is arguably a lost art. He gifted me with a pearl of wisdom that applies to damn near everything and has proven true time and again for the past 35 or so years.
Listen.
He said “Diagnosis is easy. Listen to your patients and they will tell you what is wrong with them.”
By that same token, supporting your own well being is easy. Listen to what you body is telling you. Listen to what your emotions and intuition are telling you. Let logic tell you if things are getting too far off track.
Listen to yourself. Listen to what you and your true nature need and do that. Or at least try to accommodate your night owl or morning person self as much as your schedule allows.
Today’s card is the Night Owl card from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck, illustrated by WolfSkullJack. Seven Dane Asmund interprets the card as “that thing you know but won’t or can’t admit to yourself.” It feels akin to the energy that Ted Andrews writes about for another nocturnal creature, wolves, for his version of the Moon card. He writes that “When wolf shows up it is time to trust our inner guidance…”
So how do you do that? How do you trust your inner guidance? How do you come to terms with unacknowlable inner truth?
Listen.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Asmund’s night owl and Andrew’s moon wolf are nocturnal beings.
When the day is gone and the night arises, when all of the distractions go dark, you can’t escape yourself. All that is left is to listen.
TaoCraft Short Sip is a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
It’s only human.
Hello and welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the five of swords from the Alleyman’s Tarot with art for this card by Sam Dow. This is my new favorite five of swords.
Ever since the Waite Smith Tarot deck of 1909 either created or popularized illustrated minor arcana cards, the five of swords has generally depicted someone striking a pose with swords at sunset. Mark Evans artwork for the Witches Tarot shows a dragonfly flying upward despite a whole frolick of fairies and five swords hanging over it like Damocles’ was having a clearance sale. All of these are heavy on the victory part of the phrase “pyrrhic victory” as they should. This certainly isn’t the full on defeat, stay down there and heal vibe that you see with the ten of swords.
Still, this card can touch an uncomfortable meaning. Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Mistakes, for example. They are only human. Sometimes our posing at sunset victories come at the price of mistakes. In the Light Seers deck, the figure on the card is holding his forehead with a regretful vibe and a sense of ‘what the heck did I just do’. With this card, the silhouette figure looks like he is sitting in a chair and having a full on sulk. As any toddler will demonstrate, sometimes you just have to stick your lower lip out and have a good pout.
But then comes the trick of it. While you are pouting, you can also be re-assessing. If you learn from your mistakes, a pyrrhic victory is still a victory even when the thing you learn is what NOT to do next time.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. I always appreciate your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments.
Speaking of comments, the comments have spoken and I’ll be cutting the deck into three stacks and drawing from the right stack for the month of August. We’ll try again in September and see if we can collectively come up with something different.
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See you at the next sip!
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TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
A new plan is in motion and you can play a part.
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the three of wands from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.
This card, along with a couple of others, suits August energy particularly well -at least here in the northern hemisphere. The seven of pentacles reminds us to be hands-off and let nature do its thing. The eight of wands is hints at hands that are tied. Things are in progress but out of your control and there is nothing you can do until the penny drops and the arrows land.
The three of wands has an outward appearance of waiting, like the other cards, but with a greater degree of mental alertness and engagement. This card signifies a time of expansion and growth, but with inner attention as much as outward motion. In that sense, it is a little bit like a Chariot light card. It’s akin to the major arcana’s chariot card but less intense. It’s watching your homemade caramel sauce like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. It isn’t slam into the side of a mountain level stuff like the test-pilot chariot card, but it is about being alert and watchful. It’s like chef Anne Burrel says. You can go “from master to disaster” in a few seconds if you aren’t careful.
The three of wands lets us know that stuff is happening. It is a wide horizon, expansive energy. There is plenty of room here to flex your intellectual muscle and emotional maturity. This is a big open mental space where you can fuse logic and intuition into foresight.
Personally, I identify with the “stuff is happening” part of this. I’m streamlining my email readings so people can send their questions and order the reading in one seamless process when you use the commissions menu on the ko-fi page. I hope to have more ebooks coming online as the Fall and Winter progress. I’m working on some options that will hopefully allow me to inflation proof my private reading prices, although I still need your support for this blog and podcast through the shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees on the ko-fi page.
Please stay tuned for all of those announcements. BUT for today I have something else in mind. Today is August 1, mid season between summer solstice and the fall equinox, and that seems like an auspicious time, and the three of wands seems like an auspicious card to introduce card cuts into all of my readings.
Cutting the cards is a Tarot tradition. Sometimes it is just a part of shuffling the deck. I like the tradition of cutting the cards and letting the client choose which portion of the deck we use to draw the cards. I’ve done this forever for in-person readings. It really does bring your intuition and your energy into the reading in a more powerful way. Even though the connection isn’t affected by time or distance, when we are working individually at a distance through email readings or collectively at a distance through the blog and podcast, it still helps to forge some sort of connection. Of course the most potent connection is your decision to read the blog, listen to the podcast, or purchase a private reading. Making a connection with an individual reading is easy. In person or online we talk about your question or whatever it is that prompted you to get the reading in the first place. Individual email readings are just as easy. Whenever I see your name and question (or permission for an open reading) in print, that’s when the connection clicks into place.
I’ve been experimenting with making the connection to blog and podcast and you tube readings more personal. You might have seen those in the “You Choose Interactive” posts. It clicked, but not as well as I’d hoped even with embellishments like crystal or shapes or something else to help the choice besides “left, center, or right.”
If individual choice is awkward, let’s try a collaborative choice. You choose. We’ll try left, center anr right again but as a group.
Want to play along? Just put a comment somewhere with your choice of left, center or right. Drop it here on the blog, over on the you tube channel, or on any of the socials (I’ll put links in the podcast episode description). In upcoming videos and posts, I’ll cut the deck into three piles. Tell me whether you want me to draw the short sip card from the left, center or right. I’ll watch the comments, and whenever there is a clear majority, that’s the cut I’ll use for the next week or so in the short sip readings. I’ll put the call out for a new cut, and you can comment your choice again. And so it goes. Even if you choice isn’t in the majority, the whole process is energized by your effort and intentions, making it better for everyone. I wonder what Carl Jung and his collective unconscious theory would say about this exercise? Put a little energy in, get a more energized reading back. Fair enough, right?
Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to take your time, browse the blog, and please leave a comment with your choice of deck stack for the next few readings. Heck, comment about anything in the blog / cast. Or go all out and ask a question! I won’t promise it will all make it into the blog, but all questions are welcome. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I’ll see you at the next sip!
This is the first time in a while (8 months actually, I googled it) that the day of the month is a Monday, so the pathway reading would follow the weekend turnover reading in 24 hours (or less depending on when you read things.)
Reading on top of reading on top of reading is never a good idea. WHY – your guess is as good as mine. I can see where the old school way of saying it might be something like “the cards get mad and stop talking to you.” Intuitively, energetically, it feels like that. Maybe it is something about human psychology. If it is, the seven of cups captures it beautifully with its meanings of dithering, overthinking, decision paralysis, and trusting your gut / emotions / instincts.
Trust might be the real core of it – trusting your intuition.
Asking over and over is asking from a place of mistrust in yourself, or even fear. Asking over and over might indeed be fishing for the answer you want…not the true one. That is a lack of trust in the process too. Here I am reminded of the Adam Savage quote on a tested.com t-shirt “Follow the process, not the plan.” How often in the past have we been so focused on one thing that we rejected something better when it fell right into our lap.
My favorite example of this comes from the book “One Last Time” by John Edward. Please read it for the details. He is a well known psychic and medium and has a really interesting story. I’m paraphrasing heavily here. He was very close with his Grandmother and after school they would watch the soap opera “The Guiding Light” together. As I remember it, they were open and talked about life after death. When the time came that his grandmother was near death due to illness, they made the agreement that she would communicate with him if it was at all possible. They set up three secret words between the two of them that if he heard them from a reading, he would know beyond doubt that it was her and that the communication was real. He said the first two came easily and quickly, but the third was their shared fanhood of “The Guiding Light” soap opera. In reading after reading nothing came and he became frustrated, and almost gave up on the whole thing. Multiple times he got references to lighthouses, like the ones on the New England coast. But nothing about TV, or soap opera. Finally in a slap-my-forehead moment he connected the dots that he had his answers multiple times over. The lighthouse was the guiding light he needed to hear, not the TV soap opera reference he expected to hear.
On one hand, his persistence and repeated questioning paid off. On the other he nearly threw away a profound experience that launched his career (and helped others through his readings) because of preconceived notions. If asking over and over isn’t giving you an answer.
I know that is a loooong way to go to get around to today’s Tarot Turnover. Long story short: spirit speaks in symbols and whispers. Trust your intuition. If you feel the need to keep asking, first revisit the readings and answers you have in hand. It that doesn’t help, give the problem a little time to breathe. Give it time for decisions to made and intentions to be set. Look back at the answers you have, then persist. If you are lucky, one way or the other you’ll get your lighthouse.
Today, my intuition is telling me to combine the weekend turnover intuition exercise and the path through August Tarot reading. Don’t worry….we got this. Here are this Month’s cards:
Look in a mirror. What you see doesn’t stay, Moment by moment by moment, a brand new you comes into play. Mirrors don’t cling to the past.
Thank you for reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip – Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Or tea. Or whatever you like this time of day. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is from the Alleyman’s Tarot Deck. The five of mirrors was made for the deck by the artist Hexed Boy.
Seven Dane Asmund’s interpretation for the card has to do with hidden secrets and keeping up appearances. True to form, my mind goes straight to the Tao Te Ching comparing a wise person to a mirror.
This is yet another of those many life-nuggets I’ve read in the past that got stuck in my brain without a source reference because at the time I had no intention of using it in writing, but here we are again.
Essentially, the author was saying that a wise person doesn’t judge, a wise person doesn’t hold a grudge, a wise person doesn’t strive to give advice, but merely reflects life and people as they are and let’s nature take its course.
A mirror doesn’t care if we think what we see in it is beautiful or ugly. A mirror doesn’t care if the face you see in it is big or little, happy or sad, clean or dirty, wearing makeup or not. It. Just. Doesn’t. Care.
No matter what Bloody Mary or haunted object legends you may have heard, when you get down to the bald faced physics of it, a mirror cannot retain an image. Especially with modern manufacturing and materials.
A mirror is window into the present moment, and the present moment alone.
Go to a mirror. Look yourself in the eyes and thus look at yourself in the soul. Whatever you see there is coming from you. Whatever you FEEL about what you see there is coming from you too.
You might try to drag old regrets or future worries into that image that you see, but it doesn’t work. The mirror shows you the you of right now. And right now. And right now again.
Alan Watts famously said that “you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.
Just look into a mirror. You are under no obligation to the mirror to be the same person you were one split moment ago. The person you see in the mirror in the next moment is up to you.
Mirrors don’t judge and mirrors don’t cling. Why should you?
Thank you for reading and listening! If this post and podcast resonate with you, please like and share it. New TaoCraft Short Sip episodes are posted most weekdays. Q&A, behind the scenes, and other topics post randomly at any time.
The blog and the podcast are not monetized because your Tarot message comes first here, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where your shop purchases, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique (almost) daily Tarot content.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – quote attributed to Lau Tzu.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
And the blog of a few paragraphs begins with this one quote, the first in a whole cascade that came to mind with this card:
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” is attributed to Voltaire. The eighteenth century French writer that is, although I am very fond of Aurelio Voltaire and Gothic Homemaking too.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” by Wayne Gretzsky is another favorite
There are bunches of quotes about it never being the so-called “right time” and all of these quotes connect to the spirit of the Two of Wands card.
The suit of Wands, as we know, is connected to fire, inner fire, passions, philosophy and the like. Two cards tend to hint at some sort of balance. This card has a sense of tipping point or being on the edge of something and in this case it feels positive. like being on the precipice of something good.
For all of you new Stranger Things Kate Bush fans out there who love “Running Up That Hill” as much as I have loved it for the past 35 years – check out my other favorite song from her 1985 Hounds of Love album. “Cloudbusting” strongly comes to mind here with the line “I know that something good is gonna happen.”
Precipice is a good word here, too. Whether it is obvious or a little hidden, two cards very often hint at some sort of tension or balancing act. Today the two of wands is pointing to that balance point between active waiting with alert watching and active, well, acting. Other than emergency plans that we all fervently hope we never need, what good are plans that are never implemented?
Waiting for the right moment to maximize an opportunity is important. I wonder how much human genius has been lost because of being just a teensy out of step with the right time and place. It is hard to catch lightning in a bottle when the weather is unexpectedly good.
But on the other hand, if you wait for the right moment you’ll be waiting forever because the just-right moment lives in the future and the present moment is the only one we have.
What is the harm of taking that first step if you do it knowing you just might have to change directions with your second step? Or third? Or fourth?
The adventure of your lifetime has to start sometime. Now works.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments are always, always appreciated.
Your Tarot message comes first, not advertisers’ This blog and podcast are not monetized and depend on your support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on Ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content.
Thank you again. See you at the next sip!
* card draw video on the blog features the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission.
This isn’t an IBM ad. I’m talking about that thing you do with your brain.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
I’m glad I listened to pure impulse and picked up my Steampunk Tarot today. If you search the blog, you can see all the old posts about the Judgement card. I don’t know how much sense any of it makes. Some people have a significator card, a card they feel represents their essence. Or at least most of us have a card or two or a few that we resonate with more than the others. The judgement card, on the other hand, is my nemesis card. It pushes my buttons and pokes at old scars in ways that aren’t always helpful.
I love the steampunk deck’s version of Judgement though. It is the only Judgement card that doesn’t send me into a puddle of spiraling, evangelical induced post-traumatic babble like other versions the judgement and hierophant (aka pope) cards typically do.
The judgement card, like the rest of the major arcana, has at least two major threads of meaning woven into it.
One is the judgement day, face the music kind of judgement, not unlike how we might say a court judgement or a lawsuit judgement. The legal judgement also connects to the second thread…the decision making process itself. The word “reckoning” works here too. An older meaning for reckoning is to settle a debt or account. But it also means calculation or deciding, like “navigation by dead reckoning.” The biggest problem with judgement card is how easily it can slip into petty judgmentalism.
My least favorite representation of the Judgement card is, as you might expect, is the Waite Smith Tarot. Pamela Smith’s art is saturated with christian symbolism with angels, trumpets, dead looking naked people standing in graves. That whole rapture-ish resurrection second coming thing always gives me that nervous eye tick feeling. Past experience shows the slip to judgmentalism is very short with that kind of symbolism around.
Let’s just say if that kind of religion is your jam, go for it. For me it’s a jar jammed full of glowing green radioactive toxicity. In fact, in the back of my mind, I have always low key hoped that my Tarot work would help others who disliked and rejected by the American evangelicals as much as it has helped me to recover from a childhood in that subculture.
But today, thankfully, all of that is beside the point because the card is pointing to the other connotation, the “use your head” and “use good judgement” part of the card.
The Steampunk deck is good for steering intuition away from the Smith artwork. In fact, this artwork has the opposite effect. It could easily have a “face the music” connotation, but in her guidebook for the deck Aly Fell interprets it as “heeding a call.” That is a card meaning I can resonate with. Not so much a judgement in the traditional sense, not so much answering a “calling” in the religious sense, but rather a actively thinking about our life path and thinking about the meaning we infuse into what we do.
The image also calls to mind some of my favorite D.J. and E.D.M. music like Mystery Skulls and Daft Punk. It taps into my cyberpunk side as much as the Steampunk aesthetic for some reason.
It all takes me to a happy place of thinking and reason perfectly blended with abstract ideas and creativity.
It’s a personality thing that works for some people more than others. It also brings to mind Myers-Briggs personality categories. Today’s card is a comfort zone for all the thinkers, all the people with a T as the third of their four letter category. This is one for my fellow geeks.
For feelings people, those with the “F” in their code, it might be more challenging. It might be harder for them to let their head rule their heart for whatever challenges life might pose for them.
Challenge or comfort zone, the call the Judgment card is asking us to heed is a simple one: Think.
Thank you all for reading and listening!
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Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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