Tag: tarot reader

REpeat not RETROpeat

A few days ago, we looked at the question of why cards sometimes turn up repeatedly in readings, regardless of whether you are getting readings or giving them. As I was uploading the post, I could almost hear a chorus of “It’s Mercury Retrograde” coming from social media as a hot take explanation of why life lessons are hard to learn; why messages aren’t being heard well and why cards have repeating lately.

I disagree. Understanding and enacting an important life lesson often takes much longer than any given Mercury retrograde. It takes more than a Mercury year. It can take multiple Earth years. Any retrograde of any planet in any solar system is no more than a trick of forced perspective. It is the relative movement of a very close planet compared to very distant stars. It is a little like those photos where it looks like someone is holding up the leaning tower of Pisa or holding the setting sun in the palm of their hand. As the animation above shows us, shift your point of view, and POOF! no retrograde. Only normal cycles of planets – and of nature – remain.

I have seen, however, a connection between repeating Tarot cards and one particular planet’s orbit. It isn’t Mercury; It’s Earth. The Wheel card in particular speaks to these cycles. When the Wheel shows up, think about natural cycles that may be moving through your life. There is also a subtext of adaptation. We must move with the wheel of time and natural cycles, or be crushed beneath it. This is a good example of a difficult life lesson that takes time to learn, don’t you think?

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Seasons of the year are an obvious natural cycle. Over time, I’ve seen several cards cluster around summer and winter. They seem to capture the essence of the season. I often see cards like the 9 of cups, the 4 of wands or the 3 of cups turn up frequently around the Winter holidays. It fits Those holidays are akin to the cards with celebrations, traditions, family foundations and social connections all at top of mind that time of year.

Summer cards are a bit more subtle.

We think of summer as an active time, and it is. Yet it needs balance. In the winter, we balance the seasonal cold with warm things: woolly clothes, fires in fireplaces, spices, warm drinks, candles, lights. Summer needs balanced with cool drinks, sitting in the shade, loose cool clothing, going barefoot. Again, there are cards that hint at this seasonal balance, with quiet introspective cards like the 4 of swords, 3 of wands, 5 of cups or The Hermit. Admittedly, I’ve seen this pattern emerge more as a reader than as an individual. It think of it as being part of the entrainment phnomenon we talked about last time. Cards may repeat in a party (or in a season) as a resonance with the time and place (or time of year.)

If a card keeps turning up time and again, yes, it is significance. Yes, that repetition in and of itself is a message.  If a card keeps repeating, it could be for multiple different reasons. As always, it is usltimately up to your feeling and your intuition to decide which reason best fits..or if it is something else entirely. It might be:

  • an important message or lesson you are misunderstanding, failing to hear, or failing to enact
  • a significator, a stand-in for you in the reading to show how Tarot and spiritual growth in general fits in with you as individual and with your self-image of the time.
  • a validation, a signal from spirit the card’s message is important, real, authentically for you
  • resonating with places you go …. parties and so on
  • resonating  with the season of the year

 

Q & A: Why do I keep getting the same card(s) all the time?

Every now and then, a client will either comment that they get a particular card “all the time” or they will ask why a particular card turns up in their readings a lot. All applause to them for paying attention to that detail. If something in a reading catches your attention and feels significant, then it is significant. You are always doing the right thing to follow those feelings and try to understand the message the repeat is trying to highlight.

Repeating cards are one of those things that capture your attention. The next step is the harder part; How do you know what that significance may be?

The most important, most common and most widely known reason is the repeat card carries a message or lesson that we just are not hearing. Messages will indeed repeat until we perceive, understand and enact them. In that case, repeating cards are like a hand on your elbow guiding and nudging you in the right direction until you get to the right place for the next lesson (and maybe the next repeating card) to begin.

Over the years I’ve noticed a couple of other things that could contribute to a card putting in frequent appearances.

A repeating card might serve as validation or act as a general signal over and above the card’s individual meaning. One particular card can act as a  special “attention all personnel” announcement. Whenever that particular card turns up, it might be a general  signal that the reading has extra importance.  A particular card may keep showing up in order to reassure you that this is a real-deal message for you. For example, when I was first learning Tarot, the Empress would turn up frequently when I was on the right path, doing the right thing to bring this new aspect of myself into  the world. In this instance, repeating cards are happy and reassuring. Repeating cards are not always a “hey bone head listen up already!” message. Sometimes it is “yes, this is for real” or “yup, THAT is the right direction” messages.

For a professional reader it can be more statistics than message; Doing lots of readings means pulling lots of cards. There are only 78 cards and some of them are going to repeat. Repeating cards due to volume is a good problem for a professional reader to have.

There is a thing – I’ve heard it called “entrainment.” I see it all the time at parties. As the party goes on, the tired folks feel a little more energized and the stressed people feel a little more relaxed. Everyone starts to resonate with the vibe of the group, the place, or the occasion. When that happens, one or two cards will emerge as the repeaters, turning up in a large percentage of the evening’s readings. I’ll often mention it when those repeaters turn up, in case guests are comparing notes later. I’ll point out how the shuffles, all the possible layout positions, the different types of messages all combine to give each person a totally unique message, even if everyone and their uncle is getting, lets say, the 3 of cups.

Repeating cards are multitaskers. The Fool popping up lately is a combination of things. It might be the volume phenomenon, because I’ve been doing draws here, for the youtube channel, clients, a party. Still, it hasn’t been THAT busy. The Fool card keeps coming up, in different settings, with different decks. I think I’ve finally figured out what message was trying to get through. It didn’t sink until today, but I’m going to another unrelated blog after this to enact it. Repeats can signal more than one message at a time The other hint was for this very post.

A repeating card can also be a personal “significator.” Do you see aspects of yourself in the card? Do you feel like it could be a symbol of you? It may turn up frequently to symbolize you and your relationship to the reading rather than its typical stand-alone meaning.

If a card keeps turning up time and again ask yourself:

  • Is there something I am missing? What am I missing the card keeps coming back to try and tell me?
  • Does this card resonate with me or my spirit guides? Could this simply be a hint that the reading is particularly important or a reassurance the message is truly spirit-given?
  • Is it just from the party / place/ situation where the reading is happening?
  • Am I getting too many readings too close together. Do I need to take this answer and wait, give thing give things time to evolve?
  • Is the same card carrying more than one message? I am I keeping the separated correctly?
  • Is this card a lot like me? Could it be a stand in for me and showing my part in things rather than giving a whole separate message?

When you see a card showing up time and again, don’t worry, be patient. The extra bonus meaning will become clear in time.

 

Today’s Tarot: The Wheel (13 July 2019)

Life never changes at at perfectly steady pace. It speeds and slows of its own accord. The trick is knowing when to nudge it along and when to let it flow, although most of the time it is the latter.

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Today’s Tarot: Seven of Wands (11 July 2019)

Sometimes the best way forward is straight through. To borrow a phrase, just do it. Maybe a little melee is just what we need, especially if the confrontation is with oneself.

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Today’s Tarot: The Fool / Taroko Por Hodiaŭ: La Malsaĝulo

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“A journey of a thousand miles (kilometers) begins with one step” – proverb, Tao Te Ching

I’ve always wanted to be bilingual.

It’s a bucket list kind of thing. Had 2 years of French in high school, but never quite made it past the three most important sentences in any language: J’ai faim. J’ai perdue, Ou sont la toilette pour la femme s’il vous plais (I’m lost, I’m hungry, where is the ladies room please?)

I also discovered that I do not like noun gender. The whole bilingual thing was not as interesting if it meant climbing over noun gender to get there. Then along comes Esperanto. It is a language that makes freaking sense: no exceptions, no irregular verbs, no friggen’ noun gender. The concept of Espranto, its raison d’etre if you will, speaks to why I want to be bilingual in the first place. It was designed from the ground up to be able to be communication for diverse, eccletic people anywhere, everywhere, no matter where you were from. Being bilingual seemed global. It was worldly. Speaking another language was urban and streetwise and cool, especially to a kid growing up in rural Appalachia where being different is a sort of cardinal sin. Any other language, natural or constructed, was a way to touch the world from inside the evangelical shoe box without anyone noticing. I mean, you had to have foreign language credits for college, right?

Fast forward 10 years. The kid from Appalachia started studying martial arts, and picked up a few words of Mandarin, at least enough to order my favorite take out, no noun gender required. Global and cool was mine! Those pesky full time jobs, though. They tend to get in the way of things, especially language lessons in the days before the internet. No fluency there.

Now we have TA-DAH….technology! Back to Esperanto (because noun gender). Still global, still cool, and FREE on DUOLINGO . The language name Esperanto is based on the word for hope, espero. The idea was to create an accessible second language any one can learn so everyone can communicate, with the hope of gaining understanding, conducting business and diplomacy all from an equal footing. The hope of Esperanto was to create a better world through communication. I hope to learn a bit of fluency before I croak. To that end, I’m also taking advice from a TED talk about language learning, do something fun in your new language. I’m combining hope with passion and writing Tarot posts in Esperanto.

Richard Delamare, “Evildea” of Youtube fame once mentioned in an episode that part of his inspiration for starting an esperanto YouTube channel was its uniqueness. How many Esperanto vlogs were there at the time? I wonder the same. Even now, I wonder how many people read Tarot online in Esperanto. I haven’t stumbled across any yet. But on the other hand, my skill level isn’t high enough to do a real dive into the Esperanto speaking internet. Even if there are a zillion of us, so what? There are a zillion English speaking Tarot readers and I still manage to contribute a little somethin’ somethin’ every now and then.

Mi estas komenkanto. I am a beginner. Mi faros multejn erarojn. I will make many mistakes. Mi foje faros Tarokajn lagelojn en Esperanto cxi tie. Sometimes, I will do Esperanto Tarot readings here. Gi estos amuza se nenio alia. It will be fun if nothing else.

A Sentence Suspended In Time

This post is not going the way I thought it would. This is about the 10th re-write of something I’d hoped to post last Wednesday – or something like that. Even after all of these years, cool & fascinating stuff still happens with the cards. I’m not 100% comfortable with how self-referential this is turning out to be. At the same time, I feel pushed by intuition to share the stuff that has been going on inside my head, the hope being that it will show you a little bit about how valuable a daily Tarot practice and DIY Tarot can be. Then of course, I hope you will click over to the shop and buy PeaceTarot to learn how to tap into the coolness for yourself. So shameless self-promotion out of the way, let’s take a peek at Tarot, social media and a sentence suspended in time.

The daily cards from this week have been niggling at me for days. I originally started the series with the intent of connecting a very young-seeming audience on a new (to me) social media platform. The intent was to draw a simple daily card with a short stand alone message with the hope it would help whoever stumbled across it. As the week went on a pattern emerged. It was like a slowly unwinding message, a paragraph draped across an entire work week.

  • Justice (reversed): You have done / are doing something boneheaded. Just stop. Do better next time.
  • Three of Swords: Use your street smarts. Use what you know.
  • Five of Cups: Mistakes happen. It can’t rain all the time, but neither is it sunny all the time. Let it go, this will pass.
  • Six of Wands: Make peace with yourself and the rest falls into place.
  • King of Cups: Spiritual guidance may come in its own time and at its own pace, but it always, always comes when it is needed. Even when you don’t know that it is needed.

I’ve tried a half dozen times to write this post, but it just wasn’t coming together. When writing a post feels more like a sparring match the message is often as much for me as for the audience, usually more. When the message is detached, channeled for a client or for someone “out there” in cyberspace, it flows in a different way. When it is something I need to get my head around, then the niggling and wrangling begins.

Today’card, the King of Cups, is proof in action of its own message. Even though I’ve been wanting to knit the first three cards together for a while, it needed the King of Cups’ message to feel right, to be complete.  I didn’t know it was needed, but here it is after taking its own good sweet time to arrive.

This is how the slow motion message reads now; You are doing something bone-headed. Just stop. Use some street smarts. Letting it continue might lead to bigger regrets later. Let it go. Be at peace with yourself and the right opportunities will come. Let guidance and opportunity unfold with its own timing and trust the process of intuition.

I know, I know. I should – and do – trust the intuitive process. If I didn’t we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  We all need little reminders every now and then. Even though it is an absolutely normal, needed, everyday, commonplace practice, sometimes the marketing and promotion aspects of owning and running a business (especially an artistic, esoteric, service business like this one) make me a little uncomfortable. I know my shit. It feels a little wearisome and narcissistic to have to keep telling everyone that I know my shit and am good at what I do. But that’s another story. Back to the cards.

These particular cards are courtesy of my new Tik Toc account. I thought it might be a good way to reach a younger audience that wasn’t dialed into Instagram or Twitter. I push to Facebook and Tumblr, but don’t interact with them directly very often. I just enjoy IG and Twitter more. Logically speaking, social media is both a fun and low cost promotional resource. More promotion, more clients…and I need the cash flow as much as anyone else. So what is there to lose giving a new (to me) platform a try? Short format videos is a good way to flip a card, give a sentence, and then come here for a longer interpretation. Easy.

The mechanics of it are easy. The energy of it is not. When the first page of trending videos loaded, I wanted to click away as fast as possible. Not my crowd. Like I have always said about finding the right psychic or Tarot reader… just because there is a personality mis-match doesn’t mean the other person is doing anything wrong. But ego and the bank account over rode the street smarts. I thought the “young” demo there maybe “needed” something a little more spiritual to go with the sea of selfies and narcissism. So much for TaoCraft’s “fierce authenticity,” right? I really don’t think that crowd is a good match for personal growth and spirituality. I work next level. The energy every time I opened the app is that they are still operating at the Miss Cleo stage razzle dazzle predict-my-future-so-I-don’t-have-to-think-about-it-fix-me level of Tarot. Not my gig. Still, in the spirit of giving it a fair chance, did the cards every day except the holiday to see what would happen.

What happened was the cards give me a little reminder to be authentic, and trust my gut the energy on the website for the luvva….

(insert spirit guide eye rolling here)

So what have I learned from this little experience?

Tik Tok was not a good idea, but I did the right thing keeping post comments closed and protecting the blog/website from trolling. Web sites are sites. They are places in cyberspace that carry energy and intention just as much as any room in meatspace. It is a mistake to ignore that energy. It may not be a mistake to try, but it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the vibe. This is the time and place for fierce authenticity, remember? I fully realize that I am about the next level personal growth kind of Tarot readings. I am no longer willing to compromise quality in pursuit of quantity. I need clients, always. They will come in time, with process. Don’t forget to trust the processes of authenticity, just as you trust the processes of intuition that brought you to authenticity in the first place.

Even when you are crashing around mindlessly caught up in the nuts and bolts of life….like trying to run a successful service and artistic business…the right spirit message will eventually land in your lap. The trick is being willing to listen to it when it does.

All of that being said, see how the symbolism, words, images all lead to practical, usuable language? That is what I do for clients. I translate the cards into real world advice. In this case it isn’t about predicting how my business will do, or predicting if Tik Toc will be a good source of clients. In this case it is about personal growth advice: Get off Tik Tok and be true to yourself.

There is another layer of message here….it reminds me of the message I get time and time and time again in relationship readings. This too shows the wisdom of don’t chase, attract. Be a magnet, not a search and destroy mission.  Be happy here and now, and the rest will come. Be happy and the right people will come into your life. Like attracts like. I want clients that want my style of reading. So I have to be true to my style of reading. A prediction of how many clients I’ll get won’t do a thing for me. But by steering me away from Tik Tok, I can make new choices. I don’t know how many new clients I’ll get, but I’ll be a LOT happier along the way. I’ve chosen my path and built a better future, even if it is different from the original intention or expectation of getting more clients with the Tik Tok feed. See how that works? That is exactly what my readings for clients are like too….not predictions, but a translation of spirit into usable, practical advice-sentences. Not everyone is ready for that kind of thinking. Not everyone is ready to let go of old hurts, to heal and to grow. But for those who are, I’m hear to help….not over there posting on the selfie-palooza app.

Justice reversed, Three of Swords, Five of Cups, Six of Wands, King of Cups make sentences suspended in time; You are doing something boneheaded, so just stop. Use your street smarts. Let it go. Be at peace with your true self, and the rest will fall into place. Guidance will always come – whether you know you need it or not.

 

 

 

 

Today’s Tarot 29 June 2019

New!

You know TaoCraft has a youtube channel, right? (Check it out here…please don’t forget to subscribe, click thd bell and all that youtube-y type stuff)

I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to tolerate it until the algorithm kicks in (first impressions on an energy level are not good) but am going to give Tik Toc a try. It will be all be just a quick look at the card of the day, with the longer format stuff all going to the youtube. My vision for youtube is to mesmerize with handwritten daily readings, cool inks and pens, sigil crafting and so on. Youtube is where I plan to put the longer, higher quality, less frequent vids, but my goal is also to put up flash draws (like this one) as often as possible on Instagram stories and for those who prefer it, on Tik Tok.

Consider this an invitation to stop by on social media. I am personally on Instagram and twitter everyday…so don’t be shy about saying hello. Most days I can be a pretty nice – given enough coffee anyway. The blog pushes to Facebook &Tumblr, but tbh, I almost never interact directly there.

It’s easy enough to find. I’m @TaoCraft.Tarot on Instagram, TaoCraftTarot on everything else.

Hope to see you there