TaoCraft Tarot by Ronda Snow – Page 20 – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Sunday #Short Tarot Turnover: Strength

With these videos, let’s flip the #interactive script. Instead of you choosing the card, and I give you an interpretation, this time I’ll choose the card….but YOU choose the meaning that best fits you: Today’s Card is Strength from the major arcana

Be strong – someone around you needs somebody to lean on
Be strong – Take the high road. The best way is almost never the easiest
Be strong – “just do it” is sometimes the best way to discover just how strong you really are.

LEARN TO READ TAROT

Think of these Sunday videos as a way to strengthen your relationship with your own intuition. If you want to improve your Tarot skills watch these “Tarot Turnovers” every week and practice the techniques and exercises in my ebook PeaceTarot available for download HERE

Reminder

New stuff announced on the equinox includes: “Reiki and Relaxation” (my doctoral dissertation) is available for download is the newest item in my NEW ko-fi shop. Watch form more updates to come. ZOMBIE CAT IS BACK on the home page and yes/no readings are $5 off until Halloween ’21.

Microwavable Enlightenment

There is no substitute for time. You can’t fool Mother Nature – or gluten. There is no such thing as microwavable enlightenment.

Even if enlightenment seems to happen in a flash it took some amount of time to build the lightbulb that come on over your head. It takes some amount of time to build up to the tipping point, or reach critical mass or any of a dozen analogies you could use here.

Personal growth and our spiritual journey is like a good brisket – it takes time. Microwaving the same cut of meat just isn’t the same no matter how much liquid smoke you use.

No-knead bread is just another name for biscuits. You can’t shortcut a good knead and rising time on a warm kitchen counter.

This card is reminding us that you can’t rush repose. Some things unfold in their own time. The best things take as long as they take.

Stay tuned for one more “equinox” announcement later today.

Today’s Tarot: Big sudden picture

Towers are tall.

The Tower card is usually associated with sudden chaos, a surprise big event. It makes a sort of practical, real world sense. Tall buildings and trees are more prone to lightning strikes, so it stands to reason that a tower would be a good symbol for a bolt from the blue, literally and figuratively.

Tarot doesn’t predict the future any better than it can predict where, precisely, lightning will strike during the next thunderstorm. But, like life, Tarot can suggest what to do when it does.

Towers are tall. You can climb them to get big picture understanding of the landscape around you.

Maybe during the lightning strike, a tower isn’t a great place to be. But if you re-climb the tower and get the biggest picture possible, it can help you get your head around the chaos afterward.

Today’s Tarot: What it Doesn’t Mean

Wash: “This landing is going to be interesting”

Mal: “Define ‘interesting'”

Wash: “Oh god oh god we’re all going to die”

– Firefly television series by Joss Whedon

The death card usually is an indicator that things are going to get interesting, if they aren’t already.

But, as with the Firefly crew, it might not be in the fiery crash sort of way that you were thinking. After all, it’s pretty bad story telling to kill off all of your main characters in the five minutes of a tv episode.

I remember watching totally enjoyable brain candy movie back in the late 80s where a Tarot reader pulls the death card just as The Warlock sneaks up from behind and murders her. Classic trope. That was before I learned to read Tarot much less read professionally. That classic trope has gone from fairly cheesy to downright laughable.

Everyone knows that the death card doesn’t mean actual death. So much so that revealing the actual meaning has become a trope in itself. The best example of that is Lisa Simpson and the Happy Squirrel card. Makes me giggle every time…

The Simpsons were created by Matt Groening and are the property of 20th century studios

For real, I’ve seen the death card more often at bachelorette parties than any other time. It makes sense. With a wedding, you have a whole group of people celebrating a transition and irrevocable change – a big happy one.

Even if that marriage later winds up in the messiest divorce ever, it still happened. It still changed people from who they were before the wedding. The event goes on their permanent record so to speak.

Transition and change as a death image is a common thing in both fact and fiction. To gain a butterfly, you lose a caterpillar. To gain a cupcake, you lose some flour, sugar and eggs. To gain wisdom blissful ignorance must vanish. Life altering change can be as terrifying as death itself even though change is the essence of life.

Change for the better is a grim reaper no one needs to fear.

Cue the cowbell.

Today’s Tarot: Low Pressure System

I like anime.

I watched the one and only season of Cowboy Bebop for the first time surprisingly recently. Funny how all of that adulting can get in the way of your TV watching time. The whole thing was as awesome as I’d always heard.

Spike Spiegel came to mind with the Two of Pentacles this morning because of the episode on Venus where he was teaching the kid in the airport how to fight. I was all about being relaxed which gives you clarity, control and speed.

That’s a real thing, by the way. Staying relaxed and breathing was my biggest nemisis in my brief spin through martial arts sparring back in the day.

Spike pretty much summed up the classic Bruce Lee “be water my friend” interview:

If Taoist influenced Jeet Kun Do isn’t your cup of water, then a weather report captures the same idea.

Storms are driven by low pressure. The most destructive hurricanes have the lowest atmospheric pressure at the center.

Beware the quiet ones. Relaxed fighters are the ones in control. Like the figure on the Two of Pentacles, you might have to juggle your way through a life that is a circus on the outside. If you can find SOME way to find your calm, find your low pressure center, then you aren’t just another circus act. You are, as the popular internet meme says, the storm.

Today’s Tarot: After the Fall

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Zombie Cat is back! He lives year round on the ‘no appointment needed’ Tarot page, but he’s front page news during Spooky Season with $5 of a yes/no reading by email. STILL no appointment needed – order anytime, 24/7

Ask Zombie Cat ANYTHING. He’ll make it yes/no and give you the straight answer, not matter what it is. Zombie Cat’s yes/no readings have a 100% gaurantee of containing some words and 50% chance of being dead wrong.

Welcome to the Equinox: Zombie Cat Shambles 2021!

READ THE POST THAT STARTED IT ALL: MEET ZOMBIE CAT

Intention is everything in subtle energy work. Anything that isn’t covered by intention is usually covered by symbolism.

The YouChoose post this morning talked a little bit about liminal energies and transitional spaces. Some transitions are sharp and out of the blue, like walking through a narrow doorway. Others are slow and build gradually, like walking down a long hallway. At first I’d thought about making this post as a ginormous list of everything I’ve been working on, posting them today to honor the equinox and the beginning of my favorite season and that would be that.

That’s not today’s energy

I feel nudged to go with a slow roll-out instead of a terse list. That will let me give full attention to the intention and symbolism behind these things such as they are. Today….

ZOMBIE CAT IS BACK!

Zombie Cat is an alter-ego sort of character that came from the old blog, when I working under the name Modern Oracle Tarot, inspired by the famous Schrodinger’s cat experiment and an episode of Menage A Tarot podcast. Zombie Cat lives all year in the special & lower cost readings section of the no appointment email readings page. During Halloween, ZC comes out to play on the home page.

I enjoy Zombie Cat. I enjoy doing short, fun, anything goes yes-or-no readings from that slightly snarky frame of mind. Frame of mind and fun both count in this kind of work. That is why when I do a cutesy pants promotional price reductions anymore unless it has some sort of symbolic meaning for me. In this case, I’m reducing the price of Zombie Cat readings to give energy to all the fun that Zombie Cat gives and all that Halloween and Autumn mean for me.

But I’m hoping it will entice a bunch of you to get these holiday readings, too.

Zombie Cat yes/no readings are $5 off until Halloween. Get yours HERE

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Window Into Fall

https://youtu.be/ArjkwMHU0G8

My Jedi Padawan has surpassed me.

They are an amazing artist and recently posted a Trevor Henderson inspired digital image where a sideways stoplight onto a local bridge had eyes. We talked about how the bridges are a liminal space. “Liminal” is an idea that has stepped forward in a big way lately. I’ve had Laura Zarkoff’s book Weaving the Liminal in my to-read que since it was released. I suspect the book’s time has come. I look forward to starting it this evening. Perfect for a cup of spice coffee and a fall equinox evening. I’m looking forward to it.

Today’s cards have a forward looking feel. It feels like the equinox energy this morning is gently holding a portal open for us, holding a space for the liminal, a timeless portal and a moment to stop and absorb the magick.

Whenever you see or read this, I hope the cyberspace preserves the feel of this space in time for you to reach out to the card that is most helpful to you right here, right now.

You all know I’m a writer at heart. At first it felt like it would be a stand alone video. That feeling seldom survives the posting process. Fingers touching a keyboard is a powerful, instant portal to energy and intuition.

Four of Cups: An idea is coming, but it needs you to create the space for it to arrive. Take a break, mental or physical. Quiet allows the sudden insight you want and need to materialize. It may be sudden, but it might be quiet, as spirit so often is. Noise, day to day activity and crowded thoughts drowns out the whispers of spirit, intuition and deep guidance.

The Wheel: A tumbling busy time is on the horizon. Where are you putting on the brakes, where are you stopping or sabotaging yourself? What change do want and need but at the same time resist? This card is reminding you that busy and change can be very good. Let the good times roll!

The Devil: Naivete can be dangerous. A little cynical can be a good thing. Wallowing in negativity is never healthy in the long run, but being rolled by life isn’t a good thing either. Heads up, eyes open. Take off those rosy sunnies you’ve been hiding behind and take life by the big hairy horns and it might not be so bad as all that after all. Make friends with your shadow side, so you are not a victim of shadow or light either one.

Today’s Tarot: Up in the Air

I think the bothersome thing about the 8 of wands is the way it reminds us of how little control we really have sometimes.

The card reminds us that something is up in the air. Something is pending that is beyond our reach.

A classic example is arrows in flight. You do what you can, you control what you are able to control – you aim, you choose how to pull the bow, when to let go – but once you shoot the arrow you can’t control it anymore. You can account for the wind when you aim, but if an unexpected gust comes, you can re-aim mid flight. All you can do is wait for the arrow to land and then react to that outcome, whatever it may be.

If you feel drawn to this card today, wait a little. Whatever is on your mind, cool your jets, let the process play itself out. Something is up in the air and out of your control (which is most things for most of us most days, I’ll grant you)

Sunday Short: Tarot Turnovers

Turn interactive Tarot upside down.

In “Tarot Turnovers” instead of you choosing a card and me interpreting it, I choose a card at random and YOU use YOUR intuiting to CHOOSE the interpretation that best suits your instincts for today.

FIVE OF CUPS

acknowledge, process and release the things that give you remorse
admit sadness and loss so it can, only when you are ready, begin to release and heal
Learn to deal with giving unfortunate news
It’s OK to indulge in a good mopey goth dark mood every now and then
Grief must be given its time
Revisit old issues that have had time to settle. With emotional distance and time-distance, they may be ready to be made into something new and useful, like loosening soil in the spring after a winter rest to plant new seeds.