Tag: tarot reading

Every Year Has a New One In It

A bunch of new ones, actually.

When something is a circle, it doesn’t particularly start or stop at any one place. That is true of a year. Not only is it a circle, it is kind of an arbitrary way to chunk up time into manageable pieces. People invented the year as a way to describe time. Naturally, one of the best ways to do that is, well, nature. Seasons turn in the great circle of a year (yes, I know seasons are caused by planetary tilt and orbit which is actually an elipse, but I’m in no mood for pedantics)

Either way, when and how you mark the new year is pretty arbitrary. Celebrate it any time you like…or multiple times. Perception and emotions change in a blink. Each new moment can be a fresh start. Any day can be New Year’s Day.

This is that new school year time of year. We parents, I suspect, are a bit sentimental at the passage of time. Students, I suspect, are a mix depending on how they feel about school. I’m not sure what anyone is feeling or doing with the pandemic sized wrenches that have been thrown in everyone’s schedules.

I’m a fan of Fall, so I always look to this part of the year with a fairly high degree of anticipation. Even now that I’m no longer connected to the school year per se, I still feel a sort of anticipation. It brings the hope of cooler weather, back to business and a more predictable work flow, and of course, pumpkin spice everything. Harvest and Halloween as the mark of a new year resonates with me as much as confetti and champagne in January, maybe more so.

It felt right to do a Year Ahead reading today.

(I’m still trying to think of a better name for the layout. If you have any suggestions, please drop it in the comments. I’ll do a ‘year ahead’ email reading for you if I pick your name for the layout.)

By any name – any day is a good day for a new year. All you need to do is choose your moment and begin. Two “nine” cards is particularly draws my attention to September. Whether you are connected to the American school year or not, it feels like September might be an opportune energy environment for productivity. The song “Danger Zone” comes to mind, especially the part about “overdrive” In all fairness and full disclosure, that is when I’m planning to let some schemes out into the wild, so this bit might be projection on my part…take all of that with whatever size grain of salt you’d like.

Like the year ahead layout says, let’s begin with right now.

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Speaking of seasons and the equinox – That’s when the $10 off special price (website only) for the 7 card email Tarot reading disappears. Until then, you can get a full 7 card reading (the same layout used for in-person sessions) by email for only $1 for each year I’ve been reading Tarot cards.

Friyay Tarot

This weekend is going to be a busy one here, so Today’s Tarot is a Friyay Tarot looking at the weekend vibe.

Lucky you if this card is in your path! The nine of wands is about endurance, persistence, recovery. In some instances it has to do with setting boundaries but I don’t get any sense of that sort of thing here.

If stamina and persistence is thwarted or blocked, as the reversal would hint, then the next 72 hours might be a good time to stop struggling. Just stop. The struggle and persistence will still be there on Monday. Pick it up again later, but give it a rest for now.

That isn’t to say it is all fun and games. While playing as hard as you work can be healthy and healing, healing in itself can be hard work, especially on the emotional or spiritual level. Wands cards are associated with the element of fire, the inner world – spirituality, philosophy, your relationship with yourself. Outward battles may need a rest, outward progress and persistence may be blocked or slowed, but the hard work of inner growth and facing yourself is very much at hand. It is a weekend to give it all a rest while you do inner work that will, by comparison, make the external stuff seem easier later on. Witch Instagram tends to put this kind of thing in terms of “shadow work” or “breaking generational curses.” Whatever your tradition, whatever terms you put on it, it is a weekend to look yourself in the eye, and then be kind, nurturing, teaching and healing to the person that you see.

Today’s Tarot: Pound Foolish

“Penny wise and pound foolish” came to mind with this card today. Like any ‘Murican, I naturally thought Benjamin Franklin wrote it, but a little Googling shows that it was actually a phrase coined by Robert Burton, England’s 16th century aphorism machine. He also said stuff about greasy books and proud humble people. He’s worth a look if you are into the quote thing.

If there is an energy vibe to the card at all, it would be something like “quit screwing around with all the woo woo stuff and use your head.”

Reversals, we’ve talked about. It just means the energy or area of life the card evokes is blocked, slowed or problematic. It doesn’t have to mean something negative or bad, it just gives background context to the overall message.

Often these kinds of head over heart messages come from sword cards. Pentacles is close behind with its association with the earth element. That is the feel today…this is a time to be solid, steady, grounded. Not the day for flights of imagination. This is the roll up your sleeves and work part of working magick.

It make sense, too, in the context of Pentacles’ association with money, career, wealth, work, and all aspects of the physical realm. Those sorts of things scream out for logic, and down to earth practicality. In short, this card is telling us to be “pound wise” to paraphrase Burton. This card is reminding us that money matters should always be goverened by logic and knowlegde.

Page cards are often about learning…they were the knights in training. What is it that you don’t know that could be hurting your long range planning, whatever that planning is about…but doubly so if career or money has been top of mind lately. This is a good day to make sure you have all your ducks in a row, cross your Ts and dot your Is and any other proverbs you want to throw in the mix. Look for any gaps in your knowledge that might cost you later, be it monetary or otherwise.

Just a reminder: the quickest way to reach me for questions or scheduling is through email, TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com.

NEW: you can purchase an email reading through my profile link on instagram

Please follow/subscribe to the blog. I’m scheming a few changes for fall, and this linktree/instagram is the first soft release. “Meet Me On The Equinox” as the Death Cab for Cutie song says. That’s when the $10 off special price ends for 7 card email readings (website only) and when I’ll let you in on the rest of the scheming…although I won’t promise it will survive first contact with implementation.

Today’s Tarot: Rent Well Spent

“Money can’t buy happiness. But it sure can rent it for a while.”

Kim Grunenfelder, comedien

Invest in your happiness. It helps if you can be happy with things that fit your budget.

“Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.” – Oscar Wilde

Today’s Tarot: Of two minds, and neither one has an answer

Of the different meanings for the Two of Swords, “of two minds” comes to mind. A lot of times when we think of that, it means that two options are equal, and there is no obvious, logical, good way to decide between the two. There is six of one and half dozen of the other as they saying goes.

So what do you do when you are of two minds and both options are equal: equally bad that is? What do you do when you don’t know what to do at all? What do you do when you are of two minds and neither one of them knows what to do?

It’s ok not to know. It’s ok for some things to be unknowable. And it’s ok to try and find out. If you don’t know, ask. If you don’t know, learn. If you don’t know, welcome to the universe. It is like that sometimes. We haven’t figured it all out, and that’s OK too.

“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

Richard Feynman

Today’s Tarot: Lights Out

What do you do when the lights go out? Darkness is a normal, natural thing. It happens every night.

We are the children of technology, descendants of fire and flame. We like light. It tells us what is in the darkness, it tells us we are safe and whether immediate danger exists or not. We don’t like it when the lights go out. When they do we grab flashlights, light candles, build campfires…as we should. If it’s an emergency, we need that to secure our surroundings and our loved ones. For the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that it isn’t an emergency, and you are safe, but it’s night, there is no electricity, and no place to build a fire.

Night is fundamental to our world. It’s just how things are. It’s the primordial soup we all evolved in. So why do we fight the darkness so much? What do we do when the lights go out? Why did we turn them on in the first place?

We are daytime creatures. For the vast majority of us, we rely on our vision for almost everything. Dark makes it harder to do just about anything…except sleep.

What do we do when the metaphoric lights go out? It happens. Night falls. Every. Single. Day. And so, times of uncertainty come to everyone.

The King of Wands is often associated with passion, energy, leadership, fire. When it comes to times of darkness this card often has a “light your own torch” “find your own unique light in the dark” sort of vibe. It can be a very Dylan Thomas “rage against the dying of the light” kind of card.

What if the lights going out is an incredible stroke of luck because we are looking at the wrong thing? What if the darkness comes because you need a good night’s sleep?

Do the best you can with what you have. Of course “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Sometimes, when the candle just won’t light for you, maybe it is better to nap until dawn.

Sunrise is as inevitable as dusk.

Just a reminder: In-person readings are once again on hold until community covid transmission rates go back down and we see what happens with this delta variant thing.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Wandering attention

If there is a better name for it, I’m not sure what it would be.

Psychic attention a thing. It may be related to Jung’s synchronicity, Yes, my dear nay sayers, it probably is full on cognitive bias and it may be Baader–Meinhof phenomenon for all I know, but that is perfectly fine. Tarot IS psychology from days before psychology was was psychology as founded by the likes of Wundt and Freud and that crowd. Some things need scienced, like business policy during a pandemic. Other things need art-ed. There is nothing paranormal about psychic attention either. It enriches our human interaction with our physical environs. It definitely enriches our ability to do a Tarot reading.

We as humans are pretty good at filtering out background details. So if something, be it in our daily life or on a Tarot card, grabs our attention it likely is for some reason. It might be trivial. It might be subconscious. It might carry meaning. It might not. When something grabs your attention why not give it the attention it is asking for? What is the harm in paying attention to coincidences when all you are doing is paying attention to your own mind and your own awareness?

Try it with the video. After you choose your card and see the reveal, pause the video and look at the card again. Of all the rich detail this deck has to offer, what part of your chosen card grabs your attention first? What detail grabs your attention and holds it the longest? What connections do you make with that specific thing? Even if it something general instead of granular detail, like for example, the color GREEN. What does green mean to you in this moment? What pops to mind or what feelings bubble up as you look at this particular shade of green? Does it related to the meaning of the card or is it purely intuitive?

Wandering attention is sometimes hard to catch. When it is captured, it is worth a little consideration, no matter what modern psychology calls it.

Today’s Tarot: It’s a Brisket

Time is a thing, and it takes a lot of it to make a good brisket.

If you compare references and card decks, the Hanged Man is one of those cards that has widely disparate interpretations. Based on the energy around it today, I would guess it is because the card is one of those zeitgeist sensitive time sponges. Here’s what I mean by that:

Some cards are anchors. They are – almost – timeless, with deep roots in the fabric of everything. Their meanings and interpretations seem relatively steady over time and throughout multiple decks and references. Or so it seems in the world of Marseille / Waite-Smith based Tarot. I can’t speak for Lenormand style Tarot, but I suspect it is similar. Three of swords and the Moon are examples.

Other cards, like today’s, are more fluid. They adapt and lend themselves to intuitive needs of the moment like water taking the shape of its container. I’ve seen the card interpreted as meaning stagnation, self-sacrifice, transition, new perspectives, new perceptions, surrender, release, and initiation. Today’s energy would add deliberate waiting and a little well-placed patience. It has a slightly different tenor from the ‘wait and watch for the right time and opportunity’ message that might come from the two of wands or the more meditative quality of the four of cups or the resignation of the eight of cups.

The Hanged Man, for today anyway, is about cooling your jets while in full active engaged realization that it takes as long as it takes. Let the planted seeds grow. You can’t hurry love.

It’s like making a really good brisket.

I’m not the carnivore I used to be, but I’m not vegan by any means. True to my love of Taoist philosophy, I prefer the middle way. Thanks to that and my husband’s family reunion, I have had genuine Texas brisket. It had been smoked for something crazy like 24 hours. It was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever stuffed in my food hole. It wouldn’t have been that way without that one critical ingredient: time.

That old margarine commercial might have said that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, but the truth is that you CAN’T. Low and slow meat smoking is just that…slow. You can’t make it go faster and get the same result. You can’t shove a frozen turkey into a 1000 degree oven and get anything other than a burned blob with botulism sauce.

All food cravings aside, the message isn’t a goodie two shoes entreaty to be blissfully patient. Who in human history has ever been calmed by being told to calm down? This is more about a deliberate, knowing, intentional well-placed taking of time.

It takes as long as it takes. Let it. Your brisket will be better in the end.

Today’s Tarot: Something Fabulous This Way Comes

Drag queens are the best

It was years ago, but once I was hired to do Tarot readings for a local theater group’s party. The group included a few drag performers. I don’t know if any of them enjoyed the Tarot readings, but by the time it was all said and done I was happy to my absolute core. The energy in the room was bright and glittering and it was an honor to work with all of them. Everyone there was the definition of fabulous.

If it is OK with them, give a drag queen a hug and return some of the good vibes they so naturally and generously give. It will make your day.

Today’s card reminded me of that experience, which turned my thinking toward joyous, jubilant, glorious, gleeful, authentic self expression.? What would happen if we expressed ourselves TO ourselves with all the exuberance and fun of a drag cabaret?

Some people are natural extroverts and performers. No matter what their art form may be…theater, dance, film, live music….performing is the air that they breath and sometimes their livelihood too. For the rest of us, performance is more stress-inducing than life-giving. But, I wonder, what if we spent a little time expressing our authentic selves in a performance for an audience of one…oneself that is.

How would your day (or evening) be if you allowed yourself a little time to bask in your own quiet, queenly fabulousness. Find one darn little thing that you like about yourself and wallow in it. Amp it up as high the hairdo on an episode of Drag Race and BE fabulous, at least in your own mind just for a few minutes.

Now take that feeling of fabulousness and use it to fuel your connection to life, to love, to compassion, to everyone you care about.

In less time than it takes to paint your nails, something fabulous this way comes.