It’s like the difference between taking a lunch break and quitting your job.
Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the Seven of Pentacles. It picks up on a thread from yesterday’s Ace of Cups. Remember how there was a sense of a seasonal shift in season toward a quieting to balance peak summer. You have to give the seeds time to grow before the harvest can happen.
The same idea applies generally, not just to medieval farmers on Tarot cards. Persistence is important. Perseverance is a key to success.
The other day I was browsing the Psychology Today website (as one does) and stumbled on a review of Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion of Perseverance by Michael Page. Angela Duckworth is a psychologist who studied the psychology of success. She listed the qualities exemplified by successful people in a wide variety of careers and industries. According to the review, grit was defined as perseverance combined with passion and it was more often present then talent or genius. Grit and persistence topped genius and giftedness.
The seven of pentacles is reminding us to protect our grit.
There is a difference between a pause or a short rest and giving up altogether.
The occasional pause to rest and reevaluate is as essential to success as the passion part is essential to the persistence part to create Duckworth’s grit of success.
Blindly, rigidly plowing ahead keeps us from adapting and it can be a recipe for burnout. Even if you manage to persist through the burnout, you lose the passion that is equally a part of the overall success.
This strikes me as the yang side of the four of swords’ rest and contemplation vibe. The four of swords is inwardly contemplative. This card, the seven of pentacles is more outwardly focused, evaluating and assessing and re-evaluating more than meditative. It’s physically quiet but mentally active. This kind of rest is full of evaluation, planning and mentally preparing for the next step (as opposed to more active preparation advice that you might see with the three of wands)
Pentacles represent our relationship to wealth, career, and the physical realm. It is only fitting that a pentacle card would remind us to preserve a key element of long term success.
Take a pause, protect your grit, then get back to persisting.
Thank you so much for reading and listening! Your likes, subs, shares, follows, questions and comments are always appreciated!
The feeling inside your cup is your feels to feel, they don’t belong to the chaos outside.
What’s in your cup this morning?
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
The Alleyman’s Tarot deck was extra rowdy this morning. It was sliding out of my hands and spewing all over the table after just one shuffle.
Today’s card is the Ace of Cups.
I’m sure it is just because of the great finish on the cards and the fact that I’m not exactly little miss coordination this morning, but it seems like chaos is part of the message today.
Cups have to do with the element of water, so you have all of those metaphors. Of all the properties of water, the movement is what comes to mind. It’s the “water can crash” part of Bruce Lee’s famous “be water my friend” interview. Cups also traditionally symbolize emotions. Another way of understanding the suit of cups is our closest relationships. Nothing touches our emotions like love, romance, marriage, family, children – all of our closest relationships.
The ace always touches on the essence of a suit. The ace of cups today is pointing square at our emotions and emotional state.
It is, after all, storm and hurricane season.
A couple of years ago, at the end of 2019 when the pandemic hadn’t fully hit, I did a series of readings. It seems like the energy environment was ringing everybody’s bell – hard. I must have had at least half a dozen different people say that they were having intense emotions or anxieties that they couldn’t explain which drew them to the reading. In some ways it’s hard to believe that is already two and a half years ago, almost three. In other ways it’s hard to believe that it has been ONLY two and half years ago.
Still, time has passed and that particular storm of emotion and energy has passed right along with it.
The same advice still applies, however.
I’m not talking about true mental health issues here. Those deserve respect, and the skills of a professional. Tarot isn’t for that. It can help, certainly, but Tarot is excellent for coping and gaining insight into normal ups and downs that we all experience at one time or another. Tarot helps all of us surf the crashing waves of human existence.
It’s like the extra slippery-slidey Alleyman’s deck today. Sometimes life just gets chaotic energy sometimes. Over on my personal blog “Sage & Stuff” I call it the squirrel rave after that internet meme that says “I don’t have ducks, I don’t have rows. I have squirrels. And they are having a pagan rave.”
When you are in the middle of a squirrel rave or a hurricane or life’s crashing waves or whatever metaphor you like, the ace of cups is reminding us that our emotions are still our own, regardless of the surrounding slippery crashing chaos. You don’t have to take on the energy and emotions around you.
For some people that is easier than for others. We all have our own unique levels of empathy. We all have our unique levels of stress tolerance. We all have our own individual skin thickness when it comes to stress and emotions.
Which reminds me of a pediatrics lecture I heard a very long time ago where the doctor quoted some sort of old adage along the lines of “some kids are carrots, some kids are eggs. If you put one in hot water it goes to mush, but the other just gets hard boiled.”
Whenever a wave of emotion hits, especially if it feels out of character for you or feels disconnected sometimes it pays to do a little bit of an empathy check or an intuitive sensitivity gut-check.
This is one time where we can bring imagination, visualization and the mind-body connection into play for our benefit.
Imagine this:
Think of something that you can imagine to be protective. This is imagination, so it can be anything. Imagine a shield of energy like a comic book superhero. Imagine a wizard’s invisibility cloak. Or a Faraday cage that real-world screens out electromagnetic signals. I like to think of it akin to Violet’s shield power from the Incredibles Disney-Pixar movie. Imagine you are surrounded by whatever force field invisibility cloak fortress-of-solitude symbol that you chose.
Then do an emotions check. With that protective visualization in place, what are your emotions now? Is that thing you’ve been feeling quieter now, as if it was something outside of you that has been pushing your buttons? Or is it inside your super-shield with you?
It is easy to shrug off difficult emotions and blame it on things like being empathic or mercury in retrograde or whatever. It’s natural to want to keep difficult emotions at arms length at least until a situation settles down or we heal enough to actually deal with them.
There is an up side to it. Sometimes the emotions really are out there and once you sort that out you can get back to being the laid back zen low pressure center of the hurricane.
Sometimes emotions are the tempest in a teapot, all yours to deal with. Sometimes emotions are a storm warning vibrating to let you know what the energy environment holds. The still waters inside your cup are still yours to keep no matter what is on the horizon. Both take courage to keep the cup strong. The emotions inside the cup are your feels to feel either way.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate each of you and a special hello and welcome to new subscribers and social media followers. I’m always grateful for any likes, subs, shares, follows, questions or comments that you can spare.
The blog, podcast and youtube channel are not monetized by me: your energy message comes first here, not advertisers’. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique (almost) daily Tarot content.
Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Yesterday we had a whole mug full with the rewrite of “Meet Zombie Cat.”
Today we are to sounding like that insurance company commercial that knows a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two. I’ve done a lot of Tarot readings. I stopped counting at 300 plus way back in my online “Baihu” days.
Tarot is best suited to answer”Am I doing the right thing?” but Tarot is most often asked things like “Will we get back together?”
Not, mind you, that it’s a bad question.
There are a billion different circumstances that are bad and worse that could lead to this question, but for now, let’s think of in terms of a non-married shorter term romantic break-up.
These types of break-up questions, while common, are the best and worst of Tarot all at the same time.
The bad part is the “will…” Can Tarot predict what will happen? Nope. Can Tarot read your significant other’s heart or mind or feelings or intentions or know what they will do? Big nope.
On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of situation where Tarot is at its best.
Have you ever noticed that criticisms of Tarot and psychic work are all laser focused on the prediction part and ignore the rest, which is missing the point as completely as you possibly can? Nothing is ever said about the real value of Tarot and Psychic readings: personal development, personal enrichment, spiritual expression, facing and understanding emotional distress, brainstorming creative solutions and spitballing ideas about how to CHOOSE and to ACT to make things better.
Nothing else in the human experience can make you feel like every bone and vital organ has been shattered into a million pieces like the loss of a beloved relationship. If Tarot readings can help soothe that kind of hurt for a moment, it is more than worth it, no matter what the critics say.
But it has to be a sincere reading, an authentic reading without the onus of accurate predictions. So-called accurate predictions are impossible to make anyway and only open the door to greater hurt. As with physicians, we must do no harm.
There is a big difference, however, between doing harm and uncovering anger. Anger is an honest emotion that may, if faced, lead to better things.
If you are the one hearing the “nope” then it is normal, natural, even expected to get angry when you get the answer that you’ve been dreading the most. In the long run a harsh truth is more healing than a sugar coated platitude. I’ve gotten nopes like this before and stomped off angry like the self-involved early twenty-something brat that I was. But looking back it was one of the best readings ever. Honesty heals even when it hurts. More so when it is given kindly and with the sympathetic tone of someone who has been through this kind of experience before – which is pretty much everybody. Calling you on your -ah -stuff – is what people who care about you do. It’s like telling someone when they have food stuck in their teeth. It might zing a little in the moment but it spares them greater embarrassment later on.
WILL you get back together? A better question would be SHOULD you. WHY did the relationship end? Has any of those things changed one iota? Has the past itself changed? Nope. Unless you’ve talked things through, time has passed, and trust has been re-built, it’s still a nope. Even if you wind up back together, unless something has changed, from the “should you” perspective it’s still a big no. Without those changes, what good is it for you to return to the same situation all over again?
Will you get back together? According to a one ace layout, no. Should you get back together? Still not a good idea.
Consider the Queen of Wands symbol of nurturing leadership and inner passions. How are you owning this breakup? What role did you play? What have you learned. Are you willing to lead the relationship part of your life in a new direction? Or not? What feeds and protects your inner flame: trying to rekindle a failed relationship or being on your own with a passion for the life you have (as opposed to obsessing over the life you don’t have.)
Consider the Ace of Cups. This is about emotions. Are the emotions that ended the relationship healthy or unhealthy? Are the emotions driving your desire to get back together healthy? Or, on the other hand, are emotions that make you want to never ever ever get back together the healthy ones?
Consider the Temperance card. Are you in a balanced state of mind when you ask this question? Are all parts of life in balance or is the break-up taking all of your mental and emotional resources? Are you obsessed with romance and ignoring all the other good things in life? What do you need to release to re-balance the scales? What is missing OTHER than the relationship that may be throwing things out of balance?
Zombie Cat tells it like it is. Will you get back with your ex? Nope. BUT there is a lot of good advice under that big, fat NO. Balance this loss with other happiness and other relationships, and other parts of life. Be the leader of your own inner life. Take ownership of your own emotions and our own role in the thing that happened. Be honest about your emotions.
Then the the big, fat nope might not sting quite so much.
Thank you all for reading and listening.
I appreciate you and any likes, subs, follows, shares, question or comments that you can spare.
The blog and podcast are not monetized so your spirit message comes first, not the advertisers’. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content
Thanks again! See you at the next sip!
Get your own private Zombie Cat reading HERE (only available by email) – no appointment needed.
Use Yes or No Tarot to answer the question “Am I doing the right thing?”
Sometimes the very best thing a Tarot reading can do is confirm what you already deep-in-your-bones know.
Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Yesterday we talked about Zombie Cat’s Summer Shamble. Zombies in general and Zombie Cats in particular are kind of a Halloween thing. Here in the Pittsburgh area where they filmed the classic Romero movie Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, we have a soft spot for the zombie genre any time of the year. I also have a soft spot for Halloween any time of the year, both of which fuel my fondness for the whole Zombie Cat mascot slash alter ego slash persona thing.
Yes or no Tarot readings have been around for as long as fortune telling whatever oracle they use. I like Tarot because it lends a TON of subtlety and nuance and layers to a reading. I’m kind of hardwired to like that. It is part of what makes me good at this.
Nuance isn’t always the best thing. Sometimes you just need a quick check-in with a topic that has already had a full reading. Doing full readings over and over and over again on the same issue is worse than just not helpful. It can be counterproductive and make things worse through the confusion. A one card meditation or a simplified yes or no layout like this one.
The more I think about it, the more I like this layout. No wonder Zombie Cat Shambles through every summer with some iteration of a special offer. It gives a smack-down of in-your-face clarity with a reassuring hint of nuance in the card by card part.
Yesterday we talked about the spin I put on the ubiquitous, timeless, been-around-forever yes or no layout. I took out maybe and put in “changing lines” …a changeable yes or no. It’s an I Ching concept that we can talk about some other time. When I do the three card “Zombie Cat” readings, I also add an intuitive card by card comment to give you ideas how to either keep or change the yes or no that you got – whichever you prefer.
This isn’t the only yes/no layout in existence, either. There are probably as many iterations of it as there are Tarot readers. Over time positive and negative, a yes or no quality has been given to each card, so you can take that into account as well if you have a mind too.
Nuance, I like. Gestalt, I like a lot. Pedantic detail – not so much. I’ve never really done the academic research into the yes or no connotations of each individual card. I’d rather have the flexibility that an intuitive read at my disposal. I like having the hard yes or no come from the layout and let the individual cards do their thing with empowering you and your choices.
The traditional version of a yes or no layout is really simple. I learned the basic format from intuition coach Joy Star who learned it from a rural spiritualist minister in South Carolina who had no idea what its origins were. You could easily do this at a party with playing cards. At that point, it is about the level of one of those magic pool ball toys and absolutely just as much fun. I encourage you go give it a try, and see what your intuition brings to the experience. If you use playing cards, my ebook Peace Tarot teaches you how to get those nuanced Tarot meanings with the playing cards, so that might be helpful to you too.
It goes without saying that it should be a question that can be answered with a blunt, one word yes or no. If you really really REALLY can’t put your question that simply, then see me. It may be time for a full reading or an intuition driven one card meditation. Some things are hard to do for yourself and we professionals are here to help.
The process is the same for both Tarot cards and playing cards. If you use playing cards, it doesn’t matter if the jokers are left in the deck or not.
The first step is to decide what pattern of cards means what. In the classic style, no aces is a firm no
One ace means maybe but leaning no
Two aces means maybe but leaning yes
Three aces is a firm yes.
Shuffle the cards while you say your question. You can say it out loud if you want, but if you don’t try to keep the question as clear in your mind as you can while you shuffle. I think it helps to repeat the question a few times while you shuffle for extra clarity and connection to your intuition.
Then start dealing the deck face up into three piles. Stop dealing to a stack whenever it gets an ace or gets 13 cards, whichever comes first.
If you feel weird about the number 13, pick another number. Something between 10 and 15 would probably work best.
When you are done, look at the aces that are showing on your three stacks of cards. That gives you your answer.
As you can guess, most of the readings are going to fall in the “maybe, but….” category. “Maybe” isn’t a super helpful answer when you are looking for specific guidance and clarity. That’s part of my reasoning for blending the yes/no with I Ching fortune telling.
The I Ching or Book of Changes is advice and insight divided into 64 chapters with each chapter corresponding to a hexigram. A hexigram is a pattern of six lines made up of a combination of broken or yin lines, and unbroken or yang lines. One way of finding the hexigram to guide you involves tossing three coins six times to get the line pattern. When you throw the three coins, two heads means a yang line, two tails mean a yin line. Three tails means a yin changing line and three heads means a yang changing line. When a line is “changing” that means it is SO yin or SO yang that it is read to tip over into its opposite. Reading the hexigram that includes those lines as their opposite might give additional relative insight.
I’ve applied that same principle here. One ace is a simple no. Two aces is a simple yes. A three ace yes is SO yes it could be easily nudged into a no. Absent aces is SO no it could be tipped over into a yes.
In this case we have a very common but fictional question “Am I doing the right thing?” The answer is yes. To keep it yes, a focus on creativity and creation is helpful. The Empress is often shown as an expectant mother. Ace of wands has to do creation and creativity. Ace of Pentacles hints at success, a pay-off, something coming to fruition. Intuitively I hear “bring something new into the world” and see a fancy maitre d’ making a little bow and that sweeping arm “after you” gesture. Two aces are a solid yes. A little affirmation and validation from a Tarot reading can go a long way. Maybe even long enough to encourage someone to persist, to proceed and ultimately succeed.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. Please check back tomorrow when I’ll be re-posting the original Meet Zombie Cat post that started this whole yes/no thing.
Hello and welcome to all new followers. Thank you. I appreciate you and I appreciate any likes, subs, shares, questions and comments any of you can spare.
None of my TaoCraft Tarot content is monetized. Your intuitive energy message comes first, not an advertiser’s message. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi.com. The shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of the blog and podcast.
Thank you again for reading and listening! See you at the next sip.
Zombie Cat is shambling through again this summer with yes or no Tarot answers for you.
Zombie Cats don’t move quickly.
This one shuffles through each summer since he popped up out the confluence of ideas that was a Schrodinger’s Cat YouTube explainer and a 2015 Menage A Tarot podcast episode. I’ll put up the original “Meet Zombie Cat” blog post on Thursday if you are interested.
I’m incapable of mentioning Menage A Tarot podcast without saying how grateful I am to David S. Dear, voice actor extraordinaire, for bringing me in on the project back in the 2015 Modern Oracle days. I love his current podcast project, Ninth World Journal on Spotify and Kate continues to rock out loud over at Daily-Tarot-Girl dot com. I’ll put links below & in the episode description so you can check out their awesomeness for yourself.
But yeah – Zombie Cat
I’ve spent a LOT of time talking about movie-style predictions and predicting the future with Tarot and how it doesn’t really work and how its not all that useful anyway. Some people just aren’t in a good head space for that. High minded spiritual growth and personal development really is important, and all of that has its place, but sometimes you just want some short, sweet, kick-in-the-pants guidance.
Even though promises of “100% accuracy” a sure sign of a scam in my opinion, sometimes a little “wtf just do a prediction” can get to your intuition in ways thoughtful, careful “listening to your inner wisdom and higher self” can’t. Especially if you go into it knowing any little thing could change the prediction in a heartbeat. Cause and effect really is a thing, you know.
If you come over to the blog post, you’ll see a video of the last few seconds of a yes or no layout. I didn’t have a particular question in mind when I filmed the cards. I really just intended to demonstrate a little of what the yes or no layout process is (I’ll talk about that part tomorrow)
But me being me and me being Zombie Cat (over the years he’s become a fictional character zero flocks to give outlet for the Tony Stark wannabe side part of my personality) we can’t leave it at just a yes or a no. Oh no. No no.
It starts with an age-old yes/no card dealing pattern of who knows what origin.
Then I change the interpretation of the final three cards to align with the yin yang way three coins are interpreted in the Taoist related classic I Ching…which itself has been used for fortune telling for (no-joke) … millenia. The I ching is believed to have been written around 400 to 800 something ish BC in China. But that is also a topic for another day.
Just for fun, think of a question. Make it one that CAN be answered with a yes or with a no. If you are reading the blog, scroll back up to the video to get your test-case answer (If you want a real reading of your individual question, zombie cat readings are available by email, no appointment needed HERE on the blog website and in the ko-fi shop)
In all of these Zombie Cat readings, after we get the flat yes/no answer, I go through card by card with a few intuitive ideas to consider in addition to the yes no. If you don’t like the yes or no that you got, the cards might hint at ways you can nudge things in a different direction. If you like your answer, the cards might give you hints about how you can strengthen the path you are on.
In the video example we see the final cards are the four of swords, the queen of swords and the ace of pentacles. When you get just one ace, I read that as a flat no.
Four of swords asks you to think about where you need to rest and think. Is being overextended, exhausted, or inattentive part of the reason your answer is no? If you wanted a yes maybe a little rest and contemplation, a mental review of the details will show you a different path than the one you are on. If you like the no, is risking fatigue and inattention worth it to keep it that way?
The queen of swords asks you to think about where you are giving away your power. What are you ceeding to other people that makes this a no? If you like the no, what control are you willing to give to keep things going this way?
The Ace of Pentacles points to cost. What does the no cost you? What practical things can you change or do in order to change or keep your “no”?
This is all very vague and general because this is just a vague and general-audience example reading. It is pretty much the Tarot equivalent of wet spaghetti we’re throwing at the blog and pod walls to see what sticks in the hope that it is helpful to somebody somewhere.
Please come back tomorrow for another yes/no example and Thursday for the Zombie Cat post that started this whole thing.
If you want to catch lighting in a bottle you have to stand in the rain.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Today’s card is Lightning in a Bottle, one of the expansion pack cards created for the Alleyman’s Tarot deck by Seven Dane Asmund. It’s one of two lightning in a bottle cards. It is interesting to compare the two. You can see the other in the April 2022 blog post “The Makings of Magic” The other card is more ethereal while this one has almost a steampunk, industrial feel. The other card emphasizes the luck aspect of success, this one emphasizes the action part of it.
This card is akin to the famous Thomas Edison quote that “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” Anything is possible but not everything is remotely probable. Tarot is a little like that. It doesn’t predict – it inspires us with the possibility and guides us with practical probabilities, but never exact certainties. You can’t predict exactly where lightning will strike. But you can read the weather report to see where the rain will be.
According to the national weather service, lightning can strike 10 miles or a little more away from a storm. So sure, it’s theoretically possible to be hit by a bolt of lightning while you are sitting in your back yard on a sunny afternoon, but it is far more likely to happen if you climb a tall tree in the middle of a thunderstorm.
If we think of this metaphoric lightning as creative inspiration, you can just sit around waiting for an idea to hit. Especially if just sitting around is part of your personal creative process. But that’s the trick isn’t it? That’s the climbing a tree in the rain part. That’s the perspiration part. It isn’t the sitting around in and of itself that sparks the genius. It comes from knowing what inspires you. It comes from thinking about and understanding your creative process, whatever your creative process might be. When you know yourself and know your process then you can put yourself in circumstances where the lighting will find you instead of you constantly chasing it.
So now you have your spark in a jug. What are you going to do about it? Anything? Or is just knowing you captured it enough?
It might be. Happy is the person who defines success in their own terms and achieves that instead of striving for other people’s expectations.
But let’s suppose that your success includes other people. What if you want to show or share the lightning? That’s when the work starts. That’s when climbing out of our imaginary tree and doing something with the bottle comes into play. This is the part of the process where the makers are going to make and Thomas Edison starts to sweat.
It takes work to do anything else but sit in a tree with your lighting bottle. If abiding with your lighting bottle what you want and need, by all means do that. There is a great deal of light and satisfaction in doing that and it is 1,000 percent enough. In this scenario, I think of the lightning bolt as being a metaphor for Zen style enlightenment. It is for you alone. It is for you to take home, make a part of your life, and let it light your way from now on.
If the lightning represents creative inspiration, then there might be more that needs done, a different tree to climb so to speak. Catching the idea is the first stroke of luck, making it exist in physical reality is another tree climb. If the thing you create is popular with other people, then that becomes another lucky lightning strike altogether.
Both bolts require us to spend time out in the rain.
Thank you so much for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always appreciated!
Neither the blog nor the podcast are monetized so your Tarot message comes first, not the advertisers. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi (link in the episode description.) The memberships, commissions, shop and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique, (almost) daily Tarot content.
The Four of Swords gives us permission for a little self care – or to introvert hard.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Today’s card if the four of swords.
The 1909 public domain Waite Smith card is pictured in the blog because following this advice was well underway when I sat down to write this. It’s been one of those days for about a few weeks now.
It’s been yang, so now it’s time to be yin. What goes up must come down. When you push the envelope, you have to haul it back in.
Or to paraphrase somebody on Twitter, if you’re down, stay down there for a minute, look around and recover. You just might find those keys you lost under the sofa last week.
In the Pamela Smith card, the reclined figure has their palm pressed together. Like any good sage or mirror, this reflects whatever we the viewer project onto it. Some might see it at prayerful, but it strikes me as more thought full, with a “things that make you go hmmm” vibe.
Here I am reminded of Benedict Cumberbatches portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, and the similar hand gesture he made when Sherlock entered his “mind palace” memory technique.
BBC image via screenrant.com
Folded hands can hint at outward directed thinking at a diety, or it can be deep inward contemplation, but either way the body rests and the mind is slowed. Either way it fits the four of swords card at least in today’s energy context.
Do you bristle at catchphrases and platitudes about this sort of thing, like rest, self-care or nurturing your inner cranky child who really really needs a nap right now? If you want something that feels a little more gritty & persistent with a can-do attitude, try this: introvert HARD for a little while. Think of napping as an endurance sport. Pretend that finding an excuse to stay in and give yourself a break as a mental acuity exercise. Who says finding and wearing your comfiest clothes isn’t making an extreme fashion statement?
The four of swords and I both wish you a great weekend. Get some rest – or if you prefer, introvert HARD.
Thanks for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, follows I’ll see you at the next sip!
Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships, commissions and virtual coffees all support the cost to create this unique, non-monetized, (almost) daily Tarot content.
Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip, Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the Queen of Pentacles. Today the card is bringing the earth element energy just shy of the major arcana Empress card. The card screams practical. It’s a refreshing change from the angst, the sense of warning from the US holiday events. The queen of pentacles is offering a refuge of sorts.
The video above (in the blog) features the Heart of Stars Tarot deck 3rd edition with original art by Thom Pham. I love this deck both for its color palette and the pop culture, movie and TV references that Mr. Pham uses in his images. My intuition has always peppered readings with those kinds of references. Movies, TV, and music is, in many ways, the psychic message to plain language Rosetta Stone. If we’ve both seen the same movie or heard the same song, it lets me communicate a great deal of nonverbal information to you. Mood and aesthetics unspool over time the first time you see the movie or hear the song, but can become a condensed, shorthand way to communicate that mood and aesthetic to you later in a reading.
Today is a good example. The card brought a crate full of reference. More than direct meaning, actually.
The old nike ad, saying “just do it”
The ladies from an old BBC show “How Clean is Your House” saying “tuck in”
The Zen proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”
Surfrider ads and plastic free July ads on social media.
How-to mend and repair videos on YouTube.
And, of course, Will Smith’s song “Get Jiggy With It” for the active feel of it, not any double entendre with the lyrics.
Today is a big “reduce, reuse, recycle” energy. Find creative solutions. Fix things rather than replace them. Think. Act. Engage with life actively and tangibly. It feeds your soul and conserves resources both at the same time.
Today is a day for our inner bohemian hippie. For some of us, every day is earth day. If that isn’t your style, do one small tiny thing today that is as green as you can manage. I’d say recycle, but you should be doing that all the time. Maybe repair something, grow something from the food seeds you usually toss, buy a plastic-free option the next time you replace a thing.
Interesting. Maybe it’s from the article about microplastics that I read recently, or the Surf Rider ad reference, but I get the mental impression of aqua blue, upcycled ocean plastic products, ocean or beach scented blue jar candles, and that salt spray smell when there is a breeze at the beach, one of my personal favorite experiences. One good beach day is enough to make anyone want to protect the environment.
It’s a good day to take a break from the big feels lately, roll up your queenly sleeves, and tuck in to it. Repair. Reuse. Upcycle. Recycle. Do it with royal style, but do it.
Thank you so much for listening! I really appreciate any likes, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare.
If you would like more than a sip of Tarot, full size email Tarot readings are available on the blog website. Please also visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees all support this non-monetized blog and podcast.
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Three of Swords: the easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Good news! The turbulent energy from the past few weeks has settles just the tiniest bit, just in time to draw…
The three of swords.
Hoo boy. It never stops, does it? On the other hand stopping isn’t good either. Change and turbulence, peace and calm are all different facets of the same big gemstone we call life and any day above ground, as they say, is a good one. With life comes change. With life comes risk. With life comes all sorts of fears and feels.
Classically, the three of swords is a pretty dire looking card. The image of a pierced heart. It is a card of hurt and heartbreak.
It is a reminder to guard your heart. The easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens. Healthy boundaries is key, emphasis on the healthy. Prickly, guarded, disconnected and unapproachable is no better way to live than being an unappreciated doormat. The middle way is, once again, best.
Not to go all Nancy Reagan on it -ewww- but it is ok to just say no. Know your limits. It’s important that those limits aren’t crossed by other people, but it is important that you don’t stomp on them either. That is an easy part to forget in a world of social media and normalized extreme oversharing.
It doesn’t matter so much if the potential harm is from the outside or accidentally self-inflicted, but good old Ben Franklin nailed it again. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The easiest wound to heal is the one that never happens. Mind your boundaries both incoming and outgoing.
Healthy boundaries means keeping the right things out, but it also means allowing the right things in. Sometimes the harm is in the lack. Without the challenge of exercise, bodies become weak. The over-sheltered plant dies from lack of sun and water. Saying yes is as important as saying no. The three of swords is also a reminder to mind your boundaries to make sure they aren’t over guarded causing you to live, act, intend and energize from a place of fear.
Cue Yoda and that thing about fear and anger leading to the dark side.
Ben Franklin and Yoda. Those two will get us through just about anything don’t you think?
Thanks for reading and listening! Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always appreciated.
Please support this non-monetized blog and podcast on the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. The shop, memberships, commissions and virtual coffees all contribute to the web hosting and other costs to create this free to access, (almost) daily Tarot content.
Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Usually Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. You might want to pour yourself a full mug for this one. Possibly a full mug of something stronger than coffee. Or maybe not. I don’t know – let’s jump in and see where this takes us.
This is the joker card from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck. The thing I love about exploring this outsized deck with you is the way it pushes me to the edge of my comfort zone. It also lets me interact with cards, decks and art I wouldn’t have otherwise.. This card is a little bit of both of those things.
As always, I read the card as-is before looking at the deck creators intentions and was rewarded for that pattern with this card. Intuitive reading is the whole intended point of the card which was originally drawn by Christian Ellingstad for the Arcadia playing cards. All of the cards in the Alleyman’s Tarot were either created by its author, created specifically for the deck, or used with direct permission. The author in me respects the work it took to make that level of permission and scholarship happen.
Here, the Joker card and its lovely line drawing pulls in two directions. The lighter, easier of the two talks about cartomancy. Technically, cartomancy means divination or an intuitive reading with any cards. Lenormand Tarot, Marseille style Tarot, oracle decks, playing cards – reading with all of those fall under the term cartomancy. You could use old maid cards if you really wanted to. Just as often, if not more so, when you hear the word cartomancy, it usually refers to using playing cards for the reading.
How do you do that, you might ask? The coffee mug isn’t big enough for that this morning. More on that some other day.
Long story short, readings with playing cards are at the same time the easiest and the hardest readings you can do. There are no details or complicated symbolism on playing cards. There isn’t much to memorize, so playing cards are a good way to start learning cartomancy in its largest sense.
Which is precisely why playing cards are the most difficult to use. There aren’t established meanings. There aren’t a lot of details or images for your intuition to use as fuel to find the right message. You have to read playing cards intuitively or you are screwed. Unless you add a big dose of pure intuition, playing cards are only good for playing games. But, on the other hand, if you are willing to take that chance and make the leap into intuitive reading, then playing cards are as good as any other deck for finding the insight and guidance you need.
OK, great. But what else is the Joker telling us about today?
After working with the Alleyman’s deck, I’m starting to take reversals more seriously. But even if we stick with my usual practice of deciding with pure intuition whether a reversal is indicating a slowing or blockage of energy or just happenstance, my hunch today is this card rightfully should stay upside down. So much so that this is in the old-school flip the meaning territory, which is rare in my experience.
This joker is serious.
Period. Underline. Exclamation point.
Ok, fine. But what is this joker so serious about?
I live in America. I’ll let you decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing because after the past 6 or 7 years, I’m honestly of two minds about it. Especially after the past couple of weeks.
99.999% of the time I avoid religion and politics in readings. My job is to try to bring clarity, not stir up muck. Despite that deliberate effort, sometimes intuition steps in, yoinks the good intentions right out of your hands and spits the real talk. Most of the time if it comes up, it is encouragement to get literally involved in civics; volunteer at an animal shelter, plant trees, that sort of thing. There is more to it this time. Full on politics has come crashing into a pretty little playing card.
After 4 July 2022 I can only see an inverted Joker one way: This is serious.
What the actual freaking fuckitty frack was that yesterday, America?
To the rest of the world, all I can say is – I’m sorry. I did all I had the means to do. I voted, yard signed, contributed – at one point I even volunteered and phone banked – which sucked – for a candidate who, luckily, did not suck. Yet here we are, screaming down the highway to theocracy and oligarchy and a bunch of other -archys and -isms that are – um – bad.
Democracy is in danger. Look at yesterday as if it were a Tarot reading. Consider the implications and symbolism if you drew a card that was an assault rifle slaughter of innocents at an Independence Day celebration. I’m at a loss for words. On top of the death, horror and tragedy you have a literal representation of democracy and decency under fire.
Maybe it was the movie JFK, but the phrase “kill box” keeps coming to mind. And, too, there was just an interview with Andrea Mitchell and a retired agent who worked in Dallas at one point in his career. He spoke about the paralles between the Highland Park shooting and Lee Harvey Oswald. I encourage you to listen to reliable news reporting and get the information directly for yourself. I’m not a journalist. It’s my job to stand here and point to the symbolism of it all.
This is serious.
I am worried for all religious and spiritual minorities (atheist, agnostic and secular included) as well as our LGBTQIA and our POC brothers and sisters.
This joker is not joking. All good and decent people have to band and act together, including voting this fall in hordes and droves. We have to make the polls look like that scene from the movie World War Z.
Meanwhile. Stay safe, be careful. Protect your privacy. Protest smart. Be aware of your surroundings in both cyberspace and meatspace. You are precious. We need you.
Thank you for reading and listening. Short Sip will be back tomorrow, hopefully with a little better mood for you. Take good care of yourself.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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