My Side of the Table: Parallax

“My Side of the Table” gives a behind the scenes look at the philosophy and process of Sage Words Tarot.

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I’ve been enjoying Threads lately.

It’s where I do a LOT of void screaming and rage re-posting. It’s fun. It’s another tool in the old stress-reduction toolkit. Blame it on the old Myers-Briggs personality thing. I’m INTP enough to thrive in an idea driven environment.

One of the many good and helpful things about Tarot is that is an environment of ideas, too. The suits of swords and pentacles resonate with that pragmatic, cognitive side of the human psyche. But, importantly, that is balanced by the Cups and Wands, the emotional, philosophical parts. Between the four suits and the major arcana, there are both comfort zones and challenge / balances for pretty much everybody. It helps those of us who are too much in our head to feel the feels when needs be, and it helps people in the middle of big emotions see a way through it all.

That being said, I stumbled across an interesting mini-conversation on Threads about “should professional readers get readings from other professional readers?” Not much was being said about it, so I thought I’d put my long format two cents worth here.

Actually, I put my long format two cents worth here 14 years ago when I originally wrote a blog post “Parallax”(re-printed below from the Modern Oracle Tarot archives)

Long story short, my answer is a qualified yes. It’s important for anyone to use their instincts and find a reader who resonates with them. Chemistry matters. In any Tarot or psychic reading it is important to find someone you instinctively trust, someone whose energy is comfortable, and ideally someone you feel good being around. And yes, all of those things come through email and video too.

Test that theory: surf the web or scroll social media and pay attention to your gut reflex response to a post or a website. What is it that makes you feel that way? Colors? Layout? Well edited vs raw? Pure instinct? The same applies to real world readings with real people. What about them puts you at ease or puts you on edge?

As important as these things are for everyone, it’s multiplied for a professional. We want to be at our psychological and emotional best in order to do good work for our clients – much as a good therapist would. Therapists are a good example of why professional psychics can benefit from readings from another professional. Seeing a process from the inside as well as the outside builds empathy, a good thing for both professions.

Should professional psychic readers get professional readings? Yes but only occasionally and with great focus and purpose from a known, vetted and trusted colleague.

Why occasionally? If a person needs a great deal of guidance, they may not be in a good emotional or cognitive space to be guiding others, at least for a time. Finding a reader who sets boundaries and takes care of themselves is a good sign that they can offer good advice to you.

One of the arguments against pro readers getting pro readings is the self-care aspect turned dark. Instead of an act of self-care so a pro can do their best for you, some people seemed to have the perception that it was a sign of poor quality. If a reader was any good, that they could read for themselves.

We do! All the freaking time.

But like I said in “Parallax” – sometimes two heads really are better than one.

Everything is connected. It takes two eyes to see with depth perception.

Try the “camera 1, camera 2” experiment from the movie “Wayne’s World”. We’ve all done this as kids, I think.

Here is how to experience parallax: Close one eye. Hold up a pencil (or your finger) at arms length. Using only one eye, line the pencil with a distant object – the corner of the room or a tree outside of the window for example.

Now switch eyes. The pencil isn’t lined up with the distant object anymore. A different point of view changes everything.

When you look with both eyes together, things shift again.

Should readers get readings? Yes – for all of the same reasons anyone would want a reading and with all of the same cautions and considerations anyone else would have.

And now here is Parallax from the 2019 update:

“Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 1, Camera 2” ~ Wayne’s World 2

Ever play with that trick of eyesight? Close one eye, and hold up a pencil so it lines up with an object in the distance. Then switch eyes and the pencil seems to jump to one side. Things don’t line up the same way.

In astronomy, this is called parallax. In anatomy, this phenomenon where the brain combines two slightly different views from two slightly different viewpoint gives us depth perception…it allows us to see distance. Two eyes lets us live in three dimensions. It helps us to not walk into objects and learn our environment the literal hard way.

A similar idea is true in Tarot and psychic work. Getting a reading isn’t predicting the future…it is getting a second look, a separate viewpoint to combine with our own that lets us see with greater clarity and understanding. It helps us be a bit more perceptive, and not have to learn every lesson the hard way.

Two third-eyes are better than one, in other words.

Even those of us who do readings professionally will sometimes GET one to improve our understanding and fill in any blind spots. 

I like to think that when psychics read for themselves or consult a fellow psychic, it works like binocular vision. Two readings from two people gives two views that can be fused together into a higher quality, more useful vision.

Another example is the VLA, “very large array” of radio telescopes. It is made of 27 or so radio antennae all linked together to work together like one big dish, one configuration is over 20 miles across. Working together, the telescopes have capabilities magnetudes more than any individual telescope. If we combine our logic, know-how, and life experience to work together with oracle tools (tarot, runes, palm lines, what-have-you) and other intuitives, we can increase our understanding and spiritual growth by magnitudes.

If one eye is closed, then depth perception doesn’t work. If one telescope is down, the array doesn’t work as well. We each bring our part to a reading. The sitter (learner, seeker, client) has a part to play too. When we do a Tarot reading, we work together. I translate spirit, but it is up to you to understand and apply the message. We work together like the telescopes in the VLA or two eyes together to see farther. Working together, we see with more clarity.

Together we are clairvoyant.

Touch Grass Monday

Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee. Today’s sip: Page of Pentacles

It’s probably that Dan Harris book – or maybe a response to the national news over the past week or so – but stress management is stepping forward as a good idea of everyone.

Buddhist (in the philosophy, not the religious ritual sense) impermanence and detachment step forward.

In other words, this too will pass, so don’t get too wound up in thinking or worrying about it.

Pentacles are Earth, grounding, practicality. Pages are learning, maturing, graduating to the next level. It isn’t always easy, and it isn’t second nature to everyone to wait, watch, and learn before you act, but the wisdom of it is present in a whole list of adages and platitudes:

Keep your powder dry.

Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Stay frosty.

Good things come to those who wait.

“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen… Keep in the sunlight … He that can have patience can have what he will.”

Benjamin Franklin

Today the page reminds us to wait, watch, learn, then we can act and elevate our response to something extra beneficial.

Confidence

With all the news lately, it seems important to look at things from more than one angle.

I’ve been talking about that since 2010 when I originally wrote “Parallax” the blog post. It literally, physiologically takes two eyes for us to see with depth. The same idea applies to your third eye: other points of view add depth.

It seems like everybody and their uncle is reading RWS on social media these days. I wanted to see what the general energies look like from the point of view of my Lenormand deck. If you would like to Learn a little more about this deck, please visit the “Learn with Me: Lenormand” series

Today’s cards are the book and the fish. The book has one of those relative position kind of meanings so common in Lenormand layouts. From experimenting with the deck for the Learn With Me series, I really got the most from the two card draws. It can draw in the relative position thing that is so crucial to the very large Tableaux readings, without being too fussy, overwhelming or contradictory the way very large layouts can be. In this case the book symbolizes secrets, and when it is on the left like this, it hints that the secret is out. In other words, a key thing is out in the open and a known entity.

The fish typically has to do with material wealth but today I get a stronger intuitive sense of prosperity writ large – all good things, not just money.

Together the cards give a sense of reassurance. We know what we need to know to make it work. Everything will work out OK.

Knowledge is key anytime money or any physical realm thing comes into play. Facts, logic – all of that is your friend when it comes to practical matters. But if logic and knowledge driven decisions are backed up with intuitive feeling as validation, that makes it easier. Much easier.

Knowledge backed up by intuition yields confidence.


Deck citation: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler © 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.

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Sit Still

Sage Sip meditation with the Ace of Cups

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“If turbid waters are stilled, they will gradually become clear.”

Tao Te Ching, Victor Mair translator

It is hard to see the way forward when emotions are running high. The suit of cups, in addition to close romantic or family relationships, symbolizes emotions in general. Cups are connected to the element of water, so water analogies are common, especially here with the Ace. Ace cards carry the essence of the suit. Today, the energy is more akin to water-emotion energy than its water-intuition connotations. Water can be the depths of our human psyche but also deep emotion.

Churning water stirs up all sorts of dirt and debris from the bottom of a stream. Stormy waters are dark. Raging rapids and a broad ocean is far beyond our ability to still them. Sometimes, as with real storms, we have to metaphorically take shelter until the storm passes, and the waters become quiet.

Still waters run deep it is said. We have more emotional resilience and maturity after the reflex response has passed and we’ve calmed down. When churning water becomes still, all of the dirt, sand and silt can settle out of it. Emotions settle down, debris settles out of water, both become more clear.

Nothing about this energy is suggesting suppressing or artificially quieting emotions, any more than it suggests you could (or should) stop a hurricane. By the same token, it isn’t suggesting that we should let emotions rule and ride the pure impulse of the emotions roughshod over the whole situation, either.

There is a middle way.

Sit still. Feel the feels however painful and difficult they may be. Abide your time. Waves can’t stay high unless energy is added to them.

Don’t feed the upset.

Sit still.

Just as gravity and friction and time will eventually quiet a stirred up cup of water, as long as you don’t keep stirring the cup, emotions can naturally get quiet too.

Hurricanes are an apt analogy too. On the leading edge, winds are high. Things caught up in the storm and pushed by the wind cause damage. Go to shelter. From the quiet eye in the center of the storm you can see what you need to do next.

The song “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House comes to mind with the lyric “trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup.” Let the deluge pass, and your paper cup can be filled in a puddle instead of destroyed by a wave.

Or, in the words from The Crow starring Brandon Lee – “It can’t rain all the time.”

Sit still, abide. It’s hard – but this too will pass. Stillness results in the calm and clarity you are looking to find.

The Star That Guides You

Sage Sips is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

The light that you shine is a reflection of the star that guides you.

I’m currently reading The Witches Coin by Christopher Penczak. In it he writes: 

“The way you look at the world is the way the world looks back.” and “how you see the world is how the world sees you.”

This reminds us of the two way flow, the interconnection between our inner intentions and the outer world. Affirmations, actions all conspire to co-create the world we desire. 

Like attracts like. Birds of a feather flock together. 

The Star is traditionally a card of hope and success. Today it feels like a promise. If you look for good, you’ll find it. If you look for connection, you’ll find it because if you make that the lense through which you see your world, that is how the world will see you, attracting like-minded people and like-energy circumstances to you.

Choose well the star that guides you because that is the light by which the world sees you – and the kind of world you will see. 


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Choose Your Card: 1 July 24

Focus on a question, or just the week ahead. Choose a card from the video below. Pause if you need more time. Restart to see the reveal.

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I’d originally intended to continue our series with the major arcana and the High Priestess where we would choose a card, and then connect it to the High Priestess to let it illuminate the chosen card and vice versa.

But staring at the cards before starting the video, it was clear that this is still all about summer season vibes and sure enough, cards are repeating the messages that have come through recently both in general audience readings and in private readings. A theme of “be patient with the pace, but start the journey” is emerging.

You know that adage about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with one step? It’s like that. It doesn’t matter how fast the journey goes as long as you are taking those steps. Now is a great time to take that first step, even if the next one is slower than expected.

Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission

It’s Sunday. It’s hot. Imma drink some green tea now.

Don’t worry – Sage Sips blog is still Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee

Keeping it low key while I’m keeping it simple. Here’s a little throwback card for our lazy, hazy summer Sunday afternoon.

I’m as curious as you are

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Deck citations: top row Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund, used with permission. 2nd and 3rd rows Black Cats Tarot by Maria Kurara copyright 2013 all rights reserved, used with permissions granted on llwellynpublishing.com

Tarot readers are as bad as everyone else.

As deeply as we know that the future is fluid, subject to choice, controlled by simple cause and effect and not subject to exact Tarot predictions – we love a good game of magic 8 ball and will instinctively try to peek at the path ahead as much as anyone else.

Back when I used to work as a Tarot reader for parties and events, I would sit and do yes/no readings to amuse myself until the event opened or until guests wandered over to my table. Shuffling and turning the cards would also let people know exactly what was happening at a glance.

In any case, I’d do three card yes/no readings (exactly like the “zombie catyes/no readings available for the “summer shamble”) for silly, fun, trivial questions like “will it rain tomorrow” or more importantly (depending on who you talk to) “will the Penguins win the Stanley Cup next season?” or something like that.

The three card yes/no Tarot layout that I use deals three stacks of cards, stopping at thirteen cards or an ace card whichever comes first for that stack. no aces =no, but easily changed; one ace = flat no; two aces = flat yes; Three aces = yes, but easily changed.

For individual private readings, I’ll add any intuitive thoughts the individual card meanings prompt to fill out the total reading, including the usual psychic / intuitive summary paragraph.

The down side to this is that it doesn’t tell you squat for nothing about open ended questions like “who will win tonight’s presidential debate?” You have to break it down into multiple yes or no components to get any sort of insight at all.

In the photo above, the top row of three was the response to “will President Biden win tonight’s (27 June 2024) debate?

The second row is will (the fascist, racist, rapist, convicted felon whose name will never be mentioned) win tonight’s debate

Dealing and shuffling all of this was a little tedious to do much less video, so you are going to have to trust me that after shuffling 7 times each and dealing right to left to each stack these are the end results.

Will President Biden win? – flat yes

The ace of wands hints that the President will express his true self and true character. If he wins the election this would be his last term, he has nothing to lose by making an impassioned, authentic case. The knight of pentacles and ace of pentacles in the artwork used in this deck (a favorite for yes/no layouts) both hint at a journey in progress. Pentacles themselves hint at physical realm success and wealth – perhaps a bump in fundraising but both cards have an energy overall positive outcomes.

Will the fascist, racist, rapist, convicted felon win? – flat no

Interestingly, in spite of re-shuffling the cards seven times and re-dealing the stacks from scratch, both have the ace of wands in the same position. I think it holds the same meaning for both men, that they will show their true colors. How those colors are seen and received will, as always, depend on the lens through which the audience views them. But the Star card is interesting. I think it is directed more toward audience perceptions then evil orangefuhrers debate performance. The Star card is very much a ‘guiding light’ kind of star. Perhaps the debate will have a greater impact on voting decisions than originally thought. Maybe, must maybe, it will dawn on people who haven’t cared before or haven’t followed the news before what, exactly, is going on.

I have too much personal bias to fairly interpret the final card. In my eyes the Hierophant (Pope) card speaks to evangelical support for this candidate and their blind fanaticism for his candidacy, which mirrors their blind, dogmatic following of their religion so they will not be swayed. While not technically a ‘win’ overall or to 2/3 of the nation, his evangelical base will not be lost either.

But take all this with a giant grain of salt. I thought Bernie Sanders was going to win in 2016.

Let’s hope the timeline we land in tonight is a brighter one than we landed in back in November 2016.

Like with Tarot, your choice matters more than any thin attempt at “prediction” – political or personal.

James Carville’s famous quote applies just as much to Tarot and intuition as it does to politics: “…I’d rather not predict, I’d rather affect.”

Same.

I’d rather not predict. I’d rather give you the conceptual tools to make choices that will affect your future, to help you create the future you hope for.

See you at the next sip. Or rather large drink, depending on your political leanings.