Tag: tarot q&a

I love a good rabbit hole

Hello and Welcome!

I was just on one of my favorite websites, Crystal Vaults.

It’s a good browse.

I love a good rabbit hole – a website with enough meat on its bones that you can browse and read and spend a little time and get good, solid, reliable, time-tested, usable information. If tiktoks, reels and shorts are a thin potato chip, then a good website is a full sized sandwich. Maybe a piping hot bowl of stew. If your lucky, it is the information equivalent of a full meal.

I like to think that TaoCraft Tarot is an all you can eat buffet of Tarot.

I’ve been at this for years. Decades. What started as small side freelancing to earn a little extra income for school expenses turned into 30 years of Tarot reading experience (almost 25 years of that as a professional) writing and blogging all along the way. Not all of it was on this platform, but a surprising chunk of it has been.

I love a good browse.

I hope you all will like browsing here, too. Welcome. The library is open. Feel free to use the search bar to dive into the Sage Sips / Taocraft Tarot archives. Enter a topic or tarot card and see what you can find.

Thanks for visiting!

Select cuts of meatspace sabbatical

Getting cozy here in the blog and blowing off social media for a few days, Not exactly meatspace, but a sabbatical just the same.

I like cyberpunk novels from the 80’s: William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, Snow Crash…you get the idea.

Gibson (in Neuromancer, I think) coined the term “meat puppet” which referred to the physical body as ‘meat’. So when people talk about “meat space” they mean the physical realm, in other words NOT cyberspace (another term coined by Gibson as I remember it)

I need to unplug from social media for a few days, yet I have some of that ridiculous anxiety that a few days away can provoke. I don’t want to show up here Monday and do a Choose your Card Tarot reading for an empty cyber-room.

That worry is proof in itself that a little time in meat space is needed. But only by half. I still want to do a little polishing on the website (not as done as I thought I was) and work on some other writing. So I’m basically visiting old familiar blog-only cyberspace. It feels like going home to be in this corner of cyberspace without pandering to social media. It feels like putting the toddlers to sleep and pouring myself a nice glass of wine and putting my feet up in front of a fireplace with a good book. Pull up a chair and glass of whatever you want to sip, and let’s do some old school blogging.

Speaking of homecoming, here’s a lightly edited Q&A from the archives:

Q: Nothing you said came true. Why not?

A: I. Don’t. Make. Predictions.

I’ve said it a thousand times. Tarot doesn’t predict the future. That is the dark ages, flat-earth way of using Tarot.

It doesn’t matter if predictions are “true” or not.  I could sit here and make perfect, on-target, 100% accurate predictions all day long, but then you could go out five minutes later and do something that changes everything. (See: Predicting the Future and a Big Cube of Jell-O)

Remember Yoda from Star Wars? The future really is fluid and always changing. Life is cause and effect. If you drop an apple, it will fall down. If you strike a match, it will catch on fire. If you pour water on something it will get wet.

Cause and effect is the way Nature works. It is science. Your future is created by what you choose and do. Tarot is a way to look at options, then choose the flow of energy that is best for you. It is a chance to choose the things that will help cause the effect you want. Tarot helps you to choose the path most likely to take you where you want to go in the long run…not describe every inch of dirt along the way.

Tarot doesn’t tell you what will happen in life, Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.

Short Sip Zombie Cat Tarot: Nope

Honesty is healing even when it is harsh.

No. uh-uh. Cards say noooo.

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.

Q&A: Whoops

Tarot behind the scenes Q&A: Do you ever pull the wrong cards?

Q: How do you know those are the right cards for me? Do you ever draw the wrong cards?

A: There are no wrong cards AND they happen all the time.

As always, there is no easy answer to this. Tarot is all about nuance and context.

Let’s break this down a little bit.

Do I ever draw the wrong cards? Sure. Before we look at that part, let’s think about what makes a care right or wrong in the first place.

Tarot doesn’t predict the future. Tarot is all about ideas, inspiration, creative problem solving, empowerment, and spiritual enrichment. There is nothing external or definitive to “come true” so there is nothing measurable to prove that a card is the right one or the wrong one.

Our feelings are the only thing that can define a card as right or wrong in any given reading in any given moment. Often you’ll hear people use the word “resonate” to define that feeling. When we say a card “resonates” with us it means that the card’s inherent message rings true to our individual situation, makes some sort of logical sense or it just seems to vibe with the energy of the moment. A card or Tarot reading that “resonates” with a person is analogous to two music notes that literally resonate and vibrate together..

When a card or a message doesn’t resonate that means there is a mis-match in energies, like two music notes that don’t harmonize even sound outright unpleasant. Musicians call that dissonance.

So for now, let’s define a card as being “right” when it resonates with the reader or the person getting the reading.

The cards I draw really are random. The weekday Short Sip blogcast is a good example. The companion videos lets you see the real world random card drawing process. I start each Short Sip episode by shuffling the cards, even though that part happens off camera so that the video can fit into the Shorts and Reels time limits. Then I’ll either cut the deck and grab a card out of the middle of the freshly shuffled deck or fan them out and grab a card that way.

The vast majority of the time the card resonates with the general energy of the day so well that it will highlight which one of the card’s many meanings is the best one for the episode. Some days the card just doesn’t feel right. When you have been reading Tarot as long as I have, the difference between right cards and wrong cards is immediate and obvi0us. It usually takes one good look to know whether the card resonates with the energy of the day or whether there is some sort of mis-match.

To borrow from the sound analogy again, a card that feels right is like the DING on a cell phone when you get a notice. A card that is off-energy feels like something between like the annoying choppy static of a radio station that is almost out of range and a leaf blower outside your window just as you are trying to concentrate. When that happens in a Short Sip video, I just delete and start over until the DING happens.

And yes, the off-energy thing happens in private readings and full layouts too.

If it is a live reading, I’ll point out the parts that feel off and suggest we re-draw that card. I’ve never had anyone refuse a new card. 99% of the time the person I’m reading for senses the dissonance with the card too.

If I’m doing an email reading I’ll just swap out the card and go on. There have been times where I have scooped up whole layouts and started over.

There are hunches to follow for email readings too. Scoop and re-deal feels like right thing to do for wrong feeling cards most of the time. Every now and then, with clients I know well and who are fairly intuitive themselves, I’ll get the I’ll feel pushed to let THEM decide if they want to stick with the original cards or scoop and shuffle for new cards.

So yeah, wrong cards happen all the time and that’s what I do about it.

BUT

At the same time, there is no such thing as a wrong card.

We have been talking about the cards as if they are an outside source of information that has the ability to be accurate or not. If only it were that simple.

Let’s keep up the analogies with sound.

Go back to that radio. Sure, sometimes the station doesn’t come in well. But if we tune in to the news station does that mean the rock channel is playing the wrong song?

That’s the kind of question non-linear logic we deal with in Tarot. Tarot cards aren’t anything magic or mystical. They are bits of paper with stuff drawn on them. Cards, runes, pendulums, stars, tea leaves or what have you only serve to amplify our inner human intuition. The cards help make our intuition loud enough that we can tell if our intuition is resonating with the energy of the message or the energy of the day – or not.

Spirit speaks in whispers. Tarot just helps us to hear it better.

Even if a particular card isn’t the best symbol for the energy message, spirit and energy have the capacity to whisper just a little bit louder. Somehow the right message finds its way through. The message gets through by making one card uncomfortable and prompting us to draw another card that is a better conduit for the energy message. The message gets around the cards all together with purely intuitive mental images, words, sounds and pop culture references separate and apart from any specific card. When intuition is allowed to do its thing, there is no wrong cards. Either through the impulse to re-draw a card or through direct intuitive input, we get to the right message in the end.

So yeah, there is no such thing as a wrong card because the energy gets the right message to you one way or another.

Thanks for hanging in there through this longer behind the scenes blog post and listening to this bonus Q & A episode of the podcast.

The blog, the podcast and the YouTube channel are not monetized and depend on your support. Private Tarot readings purchased through the this website and Tarot Table memberships on ko-fi all contribute toward creating this freely available Tarot content. Your likes, subs, shares, follows, purchases and memberships are always, always appreciated.

Please stay tuned over the weekend. I’m hoping to upload a new interactive Tarot in addition to the the usual Weekend Tarot Turnover intuition building exercise. I’d be interested to hear which meanings you choose and why for the Turnover exercise. Let me know your questions – ask me anything. Comments are open on the blog and the podcast. I’m on instagram and Twitter all the time – maybe too much. give you an answer of some sort in the blog cast, maybe even one using Tarot cards. If I don’t know, I’ll give you my best guess how to find out. It’a been a long couple of years and it really does feel like its time to get social and chatty again.

Thanks again for reading and listening. See you at the next sip of some kind of Tarot post or another.

An essential teacher

Just started reading Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee about Bruce Lee. Martial arts philosophy, Taoism…SO in my wheelhouse. Just a few pages in, and already loving it.

Am thinking about reviving my personal blog “Stuff” on RondaJSnow.me to do writer-y type stuff and all of the not-tarot poopgoo and Kittenwhisker-ish type stuff. After starting this book, I might add book reviews into the mix.

I’m curious. Which would you guys like better? Surf over to the other site and follow that blog (right column on desktop, scroll down on mobile) and get 100% of everything or just read a few select posts cross pollenated onto this one even though it’s off topic? If you can spare a minute, drop a comment and let me which suits you better. While you are there, feel free to give any feedback you want. Luv it, hate it, whatever. Same goes for any Tarot questions you might have.  It can be personal, like the boyfriend question yesterday, or it can be about psychics, intuition, Tarot in general.

Full disclosure: any question that comes to me other than a paid private session will be answered in the blog (scrubbed of any identifying information to protect your privacy of course) It’s kinda like a Tarot swap meet – you get a free one card reading, I get blog/podcast content. Don’t forget two important things 1. The answer is more than likely going to be in full Zombie Cat mode so be prepared for a little light snark and 2. Any and all spam or inappropriate anything will be destroyed in a blinding flash of hellfire. TaoCraft Tarot is a safe space and I am the absolute ruler and gatekeeper and writer of the policies to which it all is subject.

On other words, ask Zombie Cat anything in the comments, but do so at your own peril.

What do you think?

If you aren’t feeling the blog / Zombie Cat thing, private readings by email are available to order anytime, no appointment needed HERE

Don’t DIY this one

Thank you for reading, listening and watching TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from a contemplative cup of coffee. Any likes, subs, follows or shares you can spare are always much appreciated.

Today’s card is the Five of Swords. It is usually associated with challenges, obsacles, even outright defeat. It’s considered a negative card in a lot of ways, although not as ominous as the three of swords or the devil card. It is another of the cards where I prefer the artwork in the Witches Tarot deck by Ellen Dugan and Mark Evans that depicts a dragonfly flying upward, along with the swords. It hints at risk, challenge, potential damage….but at the same time hints at illusion, and self defeat. The dragonfly is still free to fly around the swords, just as the person on this Waite-Smith card is standing ready, strong and free not to mention very well armed.

There is a sense of advice around the card today. There are enough challenges and risks and defeats in life that you don’t need to add any of the DIY variety. Be on guard for tricking yourself into thinking things are more combative than they really are. If you are feeling defensive, try to understand what you are defending against. Your feelings are not unfounded, but over-reacting or compounding real concerns with imagined ones does not help the situation.

This morning’s energy reminds me of two quotes.

The first one has always been a favorite of mine, it cools off a flaring temper when, as we call it in Pittsburgh, Jagoffery abounds. James Marcus Bach, auther of Secrets of the Buccaneer Scholar once tweeted that “people get defensive because they have something to defend.” In other words, stay chill, you don’t know what other people are going through. By the same token, honor your own feelings of defensiveness. You are defending something – the helpful thing is to understand what you are defending. It’s ok to be ready, to stand up for yourself, to set healthy boundaries. For all of its peaceful zen insight energy, Tarot isn’t against a healthy sense of self and self-defense.

The card also brings to mind the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

No matter how much conflict is actually happening, no matter how much self defense is actually needed, when it comes to feeling inferior or feeling judged there is no need to DIY that one. Life is challenging enough without our adding to it.

If you have any questions or feedback or if you have other Tarot content you’d like to see, the comments are open on the blog and on all of the TaoCraft Tarot socials. Your questions are always welcome. Thank you for your support!

See you soon for our next sip of Tarot.

Siri, sort of.

I’m old enough to remember when people wrote letters on actual paper and had actual conversations on landline telephones, so I still appreciate the technology that lets this blog and podcast happen. It warms my Gen X cyberpunk loving heart. I’m also self aware enough to know I’ve got work to do as a media speaker. Dammit Jim, I’m a writer and this automatic thing is going to make a better, more articulate, more entertaining podcast, right?

Right?

I’m not so sure.

Basically, I’m thrilled to bits if anyone reads or listens to any of this. I’ll be doing a full on happy dance if anyone decides to get a reading because of anything in the blog or podcast. But it bothers me that the automated audio doesn’t sound the same as the words sounded in my brain when I wrote them.

My narration may not be Webby worthy – yet – but at least it has more emotional tone and verbal context than the electronic version. It is, after all, human. Humanity is what intuition, clairvoyance, psychology, Tarot and personal development are all about. This tech part is fun as heck and only going to get better as time goes on. But it is what it is, and so is the human side of it all.

I propose a hybrid. When you see “Confession” in the title, you’ll know that’s me recording the episode. If you see “Today’s Tarot” or some other title, you’ll know to expect the cyber side of the podcast.

True to the renegade pirate radio motif, nothing about Clairvoyant Confessional is set in stone. It is naturally evolving to be short, little jelly bean sized episodes. There is no sense holding something like that to a regular release schedule. Text to speech will let me drop content more often, as the inspiration hits. The “confession” episodes will happen less often, BUT they will also be longer and take a deeper dive into the humanity of clairvoyance, psychics, intuition and Tarot. Q&A episodes will always be recorded and never automated.

Did you hear that sound? That was the loud thud of a hint being dropped. If you want to submit a question to be answered in the podcast, possibly in the form of a Tarot reading, just visit the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast page on TaoCraftTarot.com. There is a link in the episode description if you are listening to the podcast. The page is in the top menu for those of you reading the blog.

Thank you all for reading and listening. I really do appreciate any follows, subscriptions, likes, or shares that you can spare. And please, for the love of your own ears, send some feedback or some questions. I can’t read for a question until you ask it.

Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you all when the next jelly bean drops.

TaoCraft Portfolio: The Bones Of It

Click HERE to get the FREE download of all the “Portfolio” posts in one .pdf document

The Bones Of It

The details of a person’s face is unique to them, but underneath we all share basically the same skeleton. Tarot is a bit like that. The details of your reading are totally unique and for you alone. Party readings are different, but all of the individual readings I do have the same core pattern and structure, regardless of whether they are in-person or distance, live or recorded, spoken or written.  

Introduction: We will talk about the questions or concerns that brought you to the reading. For distance readings this happens during the ordering process. To speed things up during ordering you can use the “instructions to the merchant ” or “customize” buttons to let me know your question or consent to an open reading. Questions do not have to be detailed or specific. You can just give a general topic, like career, romance or what-have-you. It is perfectly fine to leave a reading completely open and not ask a question at all. Some of the best readings happen when we let the energy lead the way. Talk or type, the short introduction of seeing (or hearing) your name and your question (or your permission for an open reading) is the thing that connects my intuition to your message and gets the process started. 

Card Shuffle and Layout: In distance readings I simply shuffle until it intuitively feels right. In a live reading I’ll ask you how many times you want the deck to be shuffled or cut the deck and let you choose which section we work from. The cards are placed on the table face up in the layout pattern that you ordered. The layouts will be explained in a later chapter.

General Pattern: We look at the cards as a whole picture. This can include things like major vs minor arcana, distribution of the minor suits, repeating numbers, where cards cluster within the layout, or any purely intuitive impressions that may appear.

Card by card: We talk about each card individually including its meaning, the meaning of its position within the layout and the type of message it is giving (advice, caution, validation, etc.)

Summary “psychic reading”: This puts all the cards back together in one summary. In this part we also listen for any purely intuitive information that might come through whether it is directly related to your cards or not. This is a chance to hear things that are needed, even if they are not requested or expected. There are NO guarantees about the information that will come through here. No one gets everything, but most of the time some sort of helpful intuitive message comes through; colors, crystals, aromatherapy, positive affirmations based on the cards, spirit guides, and on very rare occasions, crossed over loved ones.

Sigil Element / Intuitive Doodles: In an in-person session, I take handwritten notes as we go along for you to take with you. If any mental images come up, I’ll sometimes be able to  draw shapes to help show you what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye. Great art they are not. If anything these little psychic doodles look like petroglyphs, hieroglyphs or some kind of circuit schematics.  Sigil elements are only routinely included in the InkMagick pen and paper readings through the TaoCraft Tarot shop.Q&A: You are always welcome to ask questions throughout the reading process. If we are working live, in-person or over the phone, please ask your questions as they come up. Questions in real time can lead a reading to some of the most interesting places! If we are working at distance, questions are welcome too, but are clustered to the beginning and end of the reading. All distance readings include a follow up email at no extra charge. Email is always my primary contact with you (even for parties and in-person sessions, if and when they return)