TaoCraft tarot – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

Tarot and the Lo-Teks

Yesterday’s post was, obviously, about a new shop item on my ko-fi page. All the proceeds from my ko-fi page go toward web-hosting Sage Sips without ads, keeping the Substack paywall-free, and maybe generating a few donations for causes I care about (more about that in a later post.) I’m not going back into business. Handwritten Tarot readings are not a money-maker.

Trust me, I’ve tried it before.

I originally offered tangible, pen and paper Tarot readings years ago, when AI was the stuff of cyberpunk fiction – not anything anyone actually used in normal day-to-day life.

I’ve always been a William Gibson fan, dating back to Neuromancer. I originally offered handwritten Tarot because it was cool and niche. Bringing back handwritten Tarot is more the Lo-Teks from Gibson’s short story turned Keeanu Reeves movie, Johnny Mnemonic.

I never imagined that a person to person email with a digital photo would seem low-tech next to computer-generated art and writing, but here we are. Physical paper and handwriting seems like ancient, mysterious wizardshit by comparison.

If you want a talking type of reading – eesy peesy. There are psychics by the dozens out there doing that and it is up to you to figure out if they are trustworthy or not. (The Tao of Finding a Psychic might help) As far as I know, there are only a handful of us working in the typed-word and email formats, and fewer still that do handwritten pen and ink readings.

“A thought is powerful, the spoken word even more so, but the written word is the most powerful of all”

Sallie Christensen, psychic and author

I’m not going back into business, but I am offering these readings as a quiet rebellion against AI. This is my Lo-Tek Tarot.

Handwritten Tarot is magical and powerful – arguably even more so than spoken in-person ones. This kind of Tarot can never be digitally replicated. My bad handwriting and cringy doodles show you they are 100% real, 100% HUMAN .

Handwritten Tarot has all the advantages of any distance reading: You can’t unintentionally give body language cues. There are no leading questions, no stage mentalism, no tricks – these readings are pure spirit and intuition. No drama, no AI slop – just quiet wisdom in the ancient way of pen and ink writing.

Please include your name, U.S. mailing address, and question for the reading with your order. If you don’t include a question or topic, no problem! I’ll automatically do an open style reading and let intuition lead the way.

Sent folded into a standard #10 envelope, this Tarot reading is discreet and private. This is highly customized folk art with no refunds or exchanges. Available to USA mailing addresses ONLY.

This nominal charge is only to cover the cost of paper, postage, driving to the post office and the extra effort that these take to create.

Just like always, these readings are highly customized ephemeral folk art for entertainment and personal spritual enrichment, and do not predict the future. No refunds or exchanges or any of that other business-y stuff. Caveat emptor and whatnot.

Order one from my ko-fi shop HERE if you are interested in giving it a try.

A.I. Rebellion

“A thought is powerful, the spoken word even more so, but the written word is the most powerful of all”
Sallie Christensen, psychic and author

I’m not going back into business, but I am offering these readings as a quiet rebellion against AI.

Sent folded into a standard #10 envelope, this Tarot reading is discreet and private. This is highly customized folk art with no refunds or exchanges. Available to USA mailing addresses ONLY.

This nominal charge is only to cover the cost of paper, postage, driving to the post office and the extra effort that these take to create.

Order one from my ko-fi shop HERE if you are interested in giving it a try.

Action Eases Anxiety Tarot: Next

I’d really like it if you follow this blog. Not just because I enjoy the thought that somebody somewhere might enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it, but also so you can see the patterns unspooling with the same timing and sequence that I see it.

First the 8 of cups kept popping up and the overall vibe those days was of turning a corner, all very much attuned to the classic meaning for the card. Think walking away from a bad situation and toward a better one with all the Bittersweet painful nostalgia mixed bag of feels that experience brings.

Then the energetic turning-a-corner feeling faded into, well fading.

Even then, the Moon was making itself known in Standing in the Shimmer and in Friday’s Weekend Oracle: Fade posts.

The Moon card is still talking to us.

This morning, I did a different card draw for today with the intention of doing a collective energy, week-ahead, action eases anxiety type of reading for today. It was The Moon, The Ring and The Mice.

Don’t ask me why or how, but I lost the draft of the short before I could edit and get it uploaded to YouTube. Whatever boneheaded thing I did, I’m taking it as a hint that the card and message was wrong for the moment and tried again even though I had already reshuffled the cards and it was half an hour later.

Hello Moon.

I can take a hint.

The Moon card means it when it shows up twice like that. After all of this time with the card, I know a good synchronicity when I see it.

Today’s cards are:

What it is (current energy): The Child.

It seems like there is always that one card in a deck where the visuals don’t quite match the vibe. That can happen with any card in any deck in any given reading, but it seems like some of them are like that more often than the others in a deck. The Four of Swords in the Witches Tarot is one example. This is another. The art screams horror movie reboot to me, but the guidebook talks about new beginnings. Combine the visual with THAT and it does give a sense of crossing a threshold into something new. This is the mysterious something just out of sight and off screen with the RWS 8 of cups we’ve talked about in earlier posts. This is what we are turning a corner to face. This is what new thing we are or can fade into.

The current energy is one of becoming.

What to DO (to ease anxiety or move forward more peacefully): The Moon

Clearly this is where the emphasis is for today’s reading. DOing can be quiet and internal. The thing to do just now IS to be quiet. Both Lenormand and RWS decks have a moon card. Both styles point to introspection and intuition. There is a big pause and reflect message here. Give yourself the inner grace if not the literal quiet. Allow the wattage to be a little lower if you just aren’t feeling it. We’ve been through some stuff and seen some things, so is ok to slow down, take inner inventory – again “pause and reflect” comes through strongly here – before we tackle the new beginning, turn the corner, walk off the edge of the card and cross the glow-y threshold to something new.

I also hear “look beyond to the new cycle” … look to what is next BEYOND the corner, beginning and threshold. Cycles and circles don’t stop. Change doesn’t stop…it just happens at different speeds. The moon gradually fades from one phase to another, while Jupiter spins in the span of a typical workday. Change might be in fade mode right now, but a new phase is beyond. It’s a new moon now, in the real world. That will fade into a full moon soon enough.

Whatever place we might be in a cycle, however fast the cycle might be moving, something is always next.

What it is is something new. What to do is give yourself some grace and time to adapt.

Weekend Oracle: Fade

The ‘Waning Moon’ card is about gradual change. Today’s message lives in the Venn Diagram overlap between intuition and real world science. That is often the case with moon related Tarot and Oracle cards. Obviously – the cards reflect thoughts and emotions inspired by the literal, physical, objective real-world moon. No wonder the moon is a favorite of the science minded and the spiritual minded alike. No wonder the Artimis 2 mission captured America’s heart in spite of the political catastrophe that we’ve become.

Copy – moon joy.

In his Animal Wise Tarot deck, Ted Andrews strongly ties the Moon card to natural cycles. The physical natural world has much to teach us, but so does the metaphysical and the spiritual. It is as natural as the rest. As a lovely point of sychronicity, the moon tonight as I write this is a waning crescent which seems to emphasize the notion of fading.

In my mind’s eye see ombre hair color, again bringing fading to the forefront.

But gradual change is still change.

Think Isaac Newton.

Newton’s first law of motion is the one that tells us objects at rest and objects in motion tend to stay that way. The bigger the thing is the more it takes to move it, turn it or stop it.

The racism, fascism and Christian nationalist bigotry in the US is one hell of big thing. It’s going to take every bit of all of us to stop or change it.

Inertia is a thing. It is woven into the fabric of the universe. We shouldn’t be surprised, perhaps, if the right-wing extinction burst is the slowest in a bazillion year history. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening just because it is happening slowly. The earth turns in 24 hours. The moon circles us in a month. Jupiter turns in around 9 hours. Neptune takes 165 Earth years to circle the sun.

Neil DeGrass Tyson famously said that the “universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.” Neither is it under any obligation to meet any single one of our hopes and expectations. Things happen in their own time. They may change slowly, but they inevitably change. That is another law of the universe in both philosophy and the physical law of entropy.

The waning last quarter half-moon faded to tonight’s crescent and will continue to fade to the dark night of the new moon. Then it will fade brighter again.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice unless the full weight of multitudes and generations drag it there slowly. Hate and bigotry can fade, but only when we gradually, relentlessly do all we can to erase it.

Dilute it relentlessly with kindness, even this must and will fade.

Action Eases Anxiety: Choose and Protect

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Reading left to right:

What it is: The Whip. Harshness or conflict is at hand. Even if it doesn’t directly involve you, it impacts the environment where you live and function. Think of war or inflation that makes things worse for everyone. Now is not a time for impulse. Prepare for any storms, real or metaphoric, as best as you can. A paramedic instructor once told me that “if you prepare for the emergency, then the emergency goes away” meaning that it doesn’t change what is actually happening but it seems like less of a scary big deal than it would have otherwise been. Calm is contagious.

What to do: The Key. The Key card indicates that a choice is at hand. The choices we make today are the key that unlocks (not predicts) our future. Choosing not to choose is still a choice. You can choose inaction. You can choose to watch, wait, learn. You can choose to accept the outcome of inaction or you can choose to do everything you can to unlock the outcome you want. In the words of David Axelrod of the Barak Obama presidential campaign “The least we can do is everything we can do.”

Even if things don’t go the way you want, at least go into that situation knowing you did everything you could to make it right.

The time has come to choose your side. The fence, the middle ground has thinned so that those who do not choose will fall unwillingly to one side or another. Action speaks louder than words. Inaction is no longer silent.

In the words of Desmund Tutu, “If you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

How to do it: The Bear. The Lenormand Tarot deck gained popularity in the eighteenth century, but bears symbolized protection then just as much as our ‘mama bear’ meme does today. Important choices are seldom easy and even less often consequence free. Protection can guide some choices. Choose the thing that protects your path forward. Choose the thing that protects the people you love (including you.) Choose the thing that protects your resources during lean times. Choose what lets you see the happiness you already have. Choose the path that protects your inner peace.

Happy Mothering Day

“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter” – Yoda

When it comes to nurturing – like taking care of young ones, elderly ones, the ill or the otherwise vulnerable – physical sex assignment takes a back seat.

I mean, yes, I know only female mammals have the ability to nurse young. Don’t get pedantic on me. I’m talking big-picture, lifetime, any stage of physical life kind of physical AND emotional nurturing.

The mothering I celebrate today is one luminous being to another, free from biological or social definitions.

Just like anyone can use a bottle to feed a baby, anyone can nurture any other human being.

The biological bond with a birth mother is unique and special and well worth celebrating. But I think it is also well worth celebrating universal acts of nurturing and kindness that can come from anyone of any body type anywhere at any time.

And it is also well worth directing some of that mothering kindness and compassion to those whose mothers are no longer with us physically and those whose mothers are no longer with them emotionally.

It is OK, even on this holiday, to protect yourself from harmful relationships, even when it involves biological family. It’s even better to connect with those who have given you support and kindness when you needed it the most.

Mothering yourself – nurturing your own mental health, inner peace, and emotional well being – deserves some thanks and TLC too.

Happy Mothering Day

Hellawhack Shiznit

It might be nothing.

It’s Friday. The sun is shining. It’s a nice spring day. I have the day off from work. By every outer metric things should feel as sunny as the weather.

Yet, as I thought of writing this post, I get a little niggling feeling that there is something unseen underneath it all or something vaguely looming on the horizon. The intuition doesn’t match outer appearances.

That is exactly the time when it is easiest to doubt your intuition. Which, believe it or not, is perfectly good thing to do.

After all, what is intuition? A thought. A molecule dancing between brain cells. A vague sinking sensation in the general area of those leftovers you had for lunch.

Meditation teacher Dan Harris reminds us that when anxiety sets in, it is often helpful to remember the true nature of thought. Thoughts aren’t made up of much relative to the tangible, objective world. Thinking about thoughts like this is a wonderful way to see through the everyday chatter of our minds and work with those intuitive, not-from-food gut twinges.

The Book of Secrets card from Seven Dane Asmund’s Normal Tarot deck gives the same advice – but from a slightly different angle. The card symbolizes a test of “cleverness” as the deck author puts it.

Secrets in this case hint at something unseen be it deliberately hidden by humans or hidden behind the veil of the future. Dealing with that disconnect between external reality (like our sunny day) and inner emotion takes both intuition and intellect. It takes both kinds of thinking to help us navigate anxious, uncertain, dark, obscured, secretive times. Intellect and intuition together truly are more powerful together than the sum of the parts. Synergistic is the big word for it. Intellect and intuition are synergistic, both aspects worth our attention and inclusion. Card readings are a tool of intuition. This card calls us to be clever and use our intellect. The card itself and the context points to head and heart together.

On the other hand, both still just thinking. They are the sparkling molecular consciousness of the human mind. Both are little more than a squirt of neurochemicals and a few well placed electrons, aren’t they?

Intellect and intuition are both molecules and miracles together that at the same time comprise both everything and nothing.

Or, to borrow a phrase from Blue Man Group in their song Rods and Cones, thoughts and feelings are “hellawhack shiznit that happens inside your brizzle.”

Honor your intuition when the feeling inside doesn’t match the circumstances outside. Honor your cleverness and intellect so that all the hellawhack shiznit doesn’t run away with you.

Here’s to your beautiful brizzle. Have a good weekend! See you at the next sip.

For more of Dan Harris’ excellent work: DanHarris.com

Normal Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund used with permission: Publishing Goblin

Two Way Doorway

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A doorway works perfectly fine in both directions.

Never mind the dedicated pressure triggered in and out doors at the supermarket, I’m talking about your ordinary door.

Threshold, portal, liminal space – its all the same basic idea here.

The collective energies have been niggling at us through the eight of cups for a while now, and it isn’t done with us yet. The energy hinted at turning a corner with it as we talked about the other day in the Standing in the Shimmer post and the brilliant @spiralseatarot on threads once again wrote the eight of cups and about holding space for good things to fill the gap where we have let go of the things that no longer serve us.

Inspired by the gap in the cups that she pointed out, I intuitively heard “portal in time.” Time is something worth exploring in connection with the eight of cups.

The card at its core is about letting go of something while at the same time walking toward something better. It looks back and ahead simultaneously from the portal, the gap in the cups, this bubble we forever live in, this present moment.

Setting mindfulness and the present moment aside for another time, let’s think of the two directions we can cast our attention with this card.

With the classic Pamela Smith artwork, we can’t see what the figure is walking toward. The future is literally out of view. The crescent and round face in the clear, cloudless sky very likely was mean to communicate moon energy, but the crescent and round shapes seem a bit of a moon and sun combination – yin and yang together. That with the clear, cloudless sky both hint at infinite potential held in that out-of-view future.

The Tao Te Ching tells us that one becomes two (the unified oneness of everything can be understood in harmony of opposites, yin and yang) and the two becomes three (I see it as an echo of biological reproduction) The three becomes five (the five classic elements) which in turn comprise the totality of the physical world to this system of thought.

Long story short, the future hold a LOT of potential with this card.

The portal to the future, the gap in the cups, the space Spiralsea advises us to hold is where we draw from that infinite potential. The gap/portal/space is this right-now moment where we make the decisions and take the real world actions that influence the way things go from here. The figure on the card is taking a step. It’s not the cliff dive we see on the Fool card. This has a deliberate quality. This is a decided first step in a new direction.

It takes courage to step in to a new and unknown direction.

It takes courage to deal with the past.

If the background of this image hints at an unknowable but potential laden future, and space in the cups is our portal to time and the sacred liminal space in which we hold our hopes and intentions for the future, then the foreground deals with the past. The ground is beige and barren, with the rest of the card filled with blue, sky and water. The cups rest solidly on the bottom edge of the card.

On one hand this card is about walking away from a bad situation, expunging something harmful or dismissing something from the past that is of no more value. You’ve heard me quote it dozens of times, this again reminds me of that quote from the movie The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren says something akin to “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become who you were meant to be.”

A change that profound should never be made rashly.

The past may be barren, lifeless ground, but it is ground just the same. It is solid. It exists. It happened, it ain’t changing, the memories are yours forever.

When you walk away from the past, you can’t change what happened but you have absolute control over how the past affects you. In the gap in the cups, in this present moment space we hold, we choose how much of the past we allow through to the present. When we let go of the past, the past events still exist unchanged, but the effect it has on us is transformed.

We aren’t letting go of the literal events of the past, we are releasing the mental and emotional hold those event have on our present moment – and in turn their hold on the future.

The doorway in time we see symbolized here goes two ways. It is a present moment liminal threshold where we can both plant seeds for the future AND stop the past from contaminating those seeds. We can let go of the past’s hold on us at the same time we can choose a new direction.

Please feel free to explore the archives. Type eight of cups or 8 of cups in the search bar on the right side of the page (laptop view) to see more thoughts about this card from old posts.

See you at the next sip!

Week Ahead Tarot: Look and Listen

Sage Sips blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee (or whatever you like to sip this time of day) Please support me on Ko-Fi to help keep Sage Sips free and open to everyone without ads or paywalls. Thanks for reading!

My first thought today was to do the usual Action Eases Anxiety layout with the usual Lenormand or RWS tarot decks.

But instinct, or intuition, or spirit or the muses – or whatever you want to call it – had another idea.

First, I felt pushed toward the Normal Tarot deck (by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission) Then the layout seemed all wrong. Anxiety is often connected to outside conditions like *gestures wildly* everything in America right now.

At that point I hear “look within”

How very Bene Gesserit.

Look for and listen to your own deep intuition. It speaks quietly, and needs your full attention and maybe some amplification. Any microphone of your choice will do. For me it’s cards. It might be astrology, or a random song on a randomly chosen playlist. It might be that one wise snippet posted by someone in the middle of your nightly doomscroll. Whatever your amplifier of choice, look inside and listen to the spirit and intuition that is in there. Take yourself seriously.

Looking at the deck’s guide, the Drowned King is about tragedy at the hands of hubris. It is biting off more than you can chew, and then choking on it.

I am also reminded of the taijitu. The opposite colored dot in the middle of the widest portion of each color speaks to how anything in the extreme holds the seed of its opposite.

The advice is really about moderation. This is a week for taking the middle way.

Yell too loud and yes, you are heard, but you also let your enemies know where you are. Learn too far forward and you fall down. We’ve been called to action a lot recently by the Knight of Swords, but there are limits. Know yours.

When you’ve been pushing the “edge of the envelope,” you have to know when to “haul it back in” as the movie The Right Stuff put it.

Look inside and listen. You’ll know when to move, and when to stay put. You’ll know when to strive, and when to take smaller and chew so you don’t wind up like the Drowned king.

This card and the inverted star together let us know that we are where we need to be right now. Sit tight. Bloom where you are planted. Be present with here, now. Too much pushing or striving could lead to disaster.

Taking slow sips this week – see you at the next one

Soft Landing

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After the sun rises it sets. Days and weeks begin, and then they end. Tarot can help set the tone for your day or week. But it can do more.

Tarot gives you a 360 degree view. It can broaden your horizons, it can help you look ahead and plan, but it can also look back and understand.

Daily meditation tarot can help bring a day in for a soft landing just as well as it can get your day off to an inspired start.

The Star is about hope and aspiration and guidance.

In reverse it hears you when your compass is spinning and you don’t know which way to go.

Tonight, the Star suggests that when you don’t know which way to go that means you are already there. Be where you are.

When it is time to move, a new star will rise and you’ll know what to do. For now, bloom where you are planted. Find the contentment and happiness that is already there just waiting for you to feel it.