Sallie Christensen, author of “The Highest and Best” and gifted psychic (I had my very first in-person reading as a client with her) we were chatting about journaling and manifestation, when she advised “A thought is powerful, the spoken word is more powerful, but the written word is most powerful of all.”
Ask anyone who works with sigils regularly – I’m sure they would agree.
That is why I started doing handwritten, hand illustrated Tarot readings sent by snail mail.
The handful I did received great reviews. My favorite feedback was that the feel of the paper, and the smell of the hand dipped or fountain pen ink gave it the feel of reading a good book.
That’s what I’m aiming for with both the physical “InkMagick” readings and the email readings. I love a good book. I would like nothing better than do readings for readers. Be a reader for readers. InkMagick really is a reader’s reading.
I’m not claiming to have fantastic calligraphy or art skills. The skill is in the Tarot interpretation. The power is in the sigil-like illustrations and in the written word.
What do you think?
Maybe a seasons of the year layout would be the best place to start.
Does a reading like this interest you? Would you like a little touch of arcane magick in your coming year? Please leave a comment and let me know, send an email, find me on Instagram or Threads (@sagewordstarot) or use the “Ask Me Anything” page contact form.
Learn tarot and intuition with moon card and fish card from the lenormand deck.
I don’t think this works quite the way the guidebook says.
I could be wrong, so let’s stick with two card readings for a while and see what turns up.
With the Lenormand deck, a “tableau” reading puts the cards on the table in a simple grid, with the “Grand Tableau” using the entire 36 card deck.
I’ve used the classic 10 card Celtic Cross layout and one of the first layouts I learned was the 9 card in Sam & Carson’s Medicine Cards. It was interesting to compare those two. Even years into reading experience 9 cards was a tipping point for me. 9 was a lot, but it was a perfectly serviceable layout with plenty of detail, but it was a heavy lift at times to work through it, even later with plenty of reading experience behind me. As soon as I would use a 10 card cross, the energy would get knotty, and contradictory and verge on nonsense. Double digits seems to be a tipping point. Rather than perpetually dancing on the edge of spilling the beans, I wrote the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle and TaoCraft layouts that I’ve used for private readings from the beginning.
All along the time that we’ve been looking at individual Lenormand cards, the guide book has mentioned how pairings and connections with other cards could modify the individual card’s meaning. We saw energetic connections and flow in the three card reading we did last time, but it was more of a flow of meaning, like making a sentence rather than changing meanings through the series of cards.
It might be interesting to do some two card sets to see if any of those specifically meaning-modifying connections emerge.
In this case, the guide book doesn’t give a modification for either the moon card or the fish card relative to the other. I get the flow, sentence like connection again. The water connections to both cards gives the sense of intuition and flow as being the main message with the fish’s association with prosperity taking a little bit of a back seat to the mental image of actual fish swimming and in motion.
I get no sense of energy at all from the playing card insets, so will let that sit for now. Follow your own instincts if you think they are meaningful. Research the 8 of cups or King of Pentacles if either of those grab your attention.
My hunch is to keep up with the two card sets for a little while. Water, tides, depth all are associated with the images here. In RWS tarot deep water has to do with mystery, deep knowing. My hunch is that there is something here that hasn’t quite shown itself yet.
Let’s abide with it, and see what else two card sets have to say.
See you at the next sip!
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I want to take a little break from exploring the Lenormand Tarot deck and talk about something that has been on my mind since a conversation with a potential client yesterday. We’ve talked about it before (don’t forget you can use the search bar to browse the 1500+ posts in the archive) but it’s time to revisit the idea of accuracy in Tarot.
As I see it, accuracy in psychic or Tarot readings begs the question “Accurate compared to what?”
Accuracy of anything is a measurement of that thing compared to some desired goal. Accuracy measures how on-target something is.
To measure anything, you have to make a comparison of one thing that you don’t know with something you do know, like a ruler. Even if one of the things you are using to measure is your eyeballing estimation based on experience – it’s still a comparison.
So what do you use as your ruler to measure the accuracy of a Tarot reading?
Is your measure predicting the future?
I can tell you that level of accuracy right now – zero.
If a Tarot reading tells you what actually happens ahead of time it is one of two things:
Self-fulfilling prophecy – Cause and effect is a real thing. If you choose to DO something based on the reading, that action contributes to the end outcome. In this case, the reading caused the future, it didn’t predict it. Which is a good thing! That means you can use a Tarot reading to help you decide your best course of action. You can use a Tarot reading to help cause (or at least contribute to) the desired effect. The drawback here is that you don’t have control over everything. You can increase the chances of something happening, but you can’t 100% control everything and you certainly can’t 100% predict anything.
Pure dumb luck. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
Is your measure getting good advice?
If that is the case, then there is a very high degree of accuracy, and it happens without regard for distance or delivery method (more on that tomorrow)
Is your measure stress reduction?
With that measure, Tarot has 100% accuracy.
People come to Tarot readings for a reason. There are as many reasons to get a Tarot reading as there are people and moments along their life’s journey.
A Tarot reading is a peaceful moment. A Tarot reading is a moment of hopefulness and optimism. A Tarot reading is a moment of calm, clarity and the hope of finding a solution.
If guidance, advice, and a peaceful moment is your measure, then my Tarot readings are as accurate as they come.
Want to learn to do DIY one card meditation readings to find a peaceful moment whenever you need it?
Sage Sips Blog is Tarot in the time it takes to sip your coffee.
Sorry for being late getting this posted. I was a victim of my own turkey tryptophan and once I woke up from a nap, figured out what year it was and cleaned the kitchen it was getting late in the day. Instead of writing, I settled in and watched “Why Is This Happening Live” with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. They are hands down one of my favorite TV duos, you can almost see the IQ points dripping off of the screen. I feel smarter just by watching those two. But you HAVE to see this special. Especially if you live in America. I don’t know if the link will work for you, I THINK you can see it on the free version of Peacock, but however you need to do it, I URGE every American of voting age to PLEASE watch this. 2024 is going to be globally, historically important – no joke, no exaggeration, no intuition, just the facts on the ground in saying that. PLEASE make time for this. Please ACT. This is for real.
Ok
Enough of the scary stuff for a Friday.
Let’s look at the Lenormand cards we drew Wednesday in part one and see for ourselves if they read any differently in concert than they do individually.
I want to say yes, but not quite in the way the guide book presents.
They do connect very strongly. My colleagues are right about the intensity and in-your-face quality Lenormand seems to be lending to the reading. The cards connect to each other very strongly, but not in a way that changes the individual card’s meaning, but in a way that strengthens the connection between the cards at a layout level. Instead of connected dots, it is a fluid, unified stream of energy and consciousness. This pathway layout flows together like a heartfelt sentence.
The fading energy card is the heart (meaning union/connection akin to the two of cups) with the jack of hearts inset (akin to a knight of cups energy). The word ESTABLISHED comes to mind. I don’t think that this card in this position means that love is leaving or diminishing. It may be solid enough that you can open your focus to other things. Your attention can embrace other things. The love doesn’t leave so much as single specific relationships take up a little less space in your total attention bandwidth. This broadening and softening of focus allows you to bring your love, compassion, and sense of connection to more people and things. EXPANSIVE also comes to mind with this card.
Hmmm…go Marie. If Marie Lenormand is regarded as one of the best “fortune tellers” it is because of the intuition she tapped into, not the cards that were named for her. Trust your own heart and noggin. I suspect that, and some cultural saavy got her to where she went.
Current energy is the Stars cards. I have no idea why this is stars, plural and the other decks have Star, singular, in the major arcana. It probably has no significance at all. In any case, the Stars is associated with divine guidance, just like the Star in RWS cards. There is also an element of wish fulfillment (cue Jiminy Cricket and “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio)
There is some connected-card meaning modification here. The guidebook says that when the Stars and The Heart appear together, it means that a “relationship is blessed.” In the energy I see here, however, YOU are the one doing the blessing, not some divine providence.
Finally the growing energy is the Garden card. This is associated with a place of meeting or community. The inset is stepping forward a bit. The 8 of spades is akin to the 8 of swords. If I think about the 8 of swords, its connotations of empowerment vs powerlessness and victim mindset steps forward.
In understanding the Garden card, lets look at it through the lens of its inset companion, the 8 of spades/swords.
The Pamela Smith art is my favorite representation for the eight of swords because it clearly shows some key ideas. The woman’s feet are unbound. She can’t see, hear or use her arms, but she can walk. It would require that she use care, touch and other senses to move safely, BUT she could walk forward, follow the water (intuition, emotions) at her feet through the circle of swords to safety. Often this comes gives the message of unconventional action or creative problem solving. She can use whatever is at her disposal in order to act and to escape OR she can choose to stand still and remain imprisoned. Each would require its own kind of courage and endurance.
Now, about that sentence.
Expansive love, flowing into guidance and action.
Bless your relationships (of all types)
Speak your love-language, whatever it is, and speak it loudly.
If your love language is cooking special favorite foods for loved ones, you’ve had a good couple of days. However you show affection, let it flow. In loving others we can liberate ourselves.
The only real oracle is human intuition. We made the machines that make the art.
public domain image via creative commons
I’m as cyberpunk as the next Tarot reader.
Probably way more so. There are reasons why I thrive doing email readings. They are my best work, tbh.
But there are also reasons why I love using the Lofi Girl / Lofi Chill aesthetic to describe my Tarot style. I can be all synthwave and cyberspace but still keep the lo-fi human touch which is the whole point of Tarot in the first place.
78 cards raised to the power of near infinite combinations of any one shuffle raised to the power of layout position times the different layout possibilities – is a bigger number than I can calculate. Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great explainer on TikTok about the shuffle thing.
Tarot excels at dealing with human thoughts and emotions but there are some things about the human condition and external environment that early Tarot readers could never imagine.
Imagine what will come to be that is off the far front of OUR radar.
If I were to create a brand new Tarot card, it’d be technology of some sort. Maybe a cyberpunk looking radio telescope. I think some oracle decks already have cards like that.
Artificial Intelligence and machine made art is one thing early Tarot readers probably never envisioned If they imagined it, I’m guessing it would have been understood in a different context. I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Their magic is our AI.
We made the machines that make the art. I wonder if anyone has made a Tarot deck with ChatGPT yet. If not, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.
Regardless of who or what or how the cards are generated, the one, the only, the true oracle is pure human intuition. Cards are just tools no matter what tools humans use to create the cards.
As far as I know, you can’t mimic intuition with a bot.
All I know is that I don’t use any of it.
Email is as technical as it gets with my readings. The readings will always be me, a keyboard and a photo of your unique real-world actual physical cards in a real world, actual, physical card layout – no AI at all.
The problem with AI right now is not so much the technology as the copyright. I actually like the AI generated aesthetic that is everywhere on social media these days. I’d love to have book covers look like that – but I’d feel terrible taking a REAL artist’s creation for a book cover without their knowledge or consent. So I haven’t even played with AI for fun yet.
I know the amount of work it takes to write something and write it well. I respect copyrights and intellectual property and expect the same in return. While the posts on Sage Sips blog are non-derivative noncommercial attribution share alike creative commons 4.0 licensed. That means you can quote and share all you like so long as you give me credit for writing it, don’t change it and don’t charge money for it. Fair enough, right? Especially considering everything here is my own creation, my own hard work – no AI help at all.
Next up is the three card Energy Path reading for the week that will post on Monday, but for now it’s time for my lo-fi human self to go get another cup of coffee.
I’m only writing this to get myself organized. Maybe. Everything here is subject to sudden, random, unannounced changes. Let the squirrel rave of life begin!
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All blog and social media content is intended for fun and personal enrichment only. These posts read general, zeitgeist, collective energies. If it resonates for you personally – great! If a post doesn’t resonate for you personally, please try a private reading or browse the archives with the search bar.
Monday: Three card energy path reading. This is the same format as a private “pathway” reading with me by email. EMAIL READINGS ARE MY SPECIALTY and I hope these readings 1. show you how useful email readings are and 2. gives you a good start to the new week.
Tuesday: day job day – private email readings only
Wednesday: “Learn With Me” – explore other oracles, or Tarot behind the scenes.
Thursday: Weekly newsletter on Medium, this blog and on the ko-fi blog
Friday: revisit the “growing energy” card from Monday’s reading to update for the weekend. Maybe. Might be other topics, might be a fresh one card draw or I may blow it off entirely depending on the day and intuition.
Saturday: posting on Sage’s Other Words about non-Tarot topics, if anything. Maybe nothing, depending on what’s going on.
Sunday: closed. (It’s not a religious thing…it just fits the schedule)
Squirrel phot0 is public domain as best as I can tell.
“I don’t have ducks. I don’t have rows. I have squirrels and they are hosting a pagan rave” – unknown
“The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.” – Aurora
Learn with me: Oracle Dice continues. Now that we have our 7 learning dice, we add another layer of meaning.
I’m presenting and learning the dice the same way that I’ve studied Tarot over the years for two basic reasons. First, I know this methodology works. I’ve used it. Been there and done that. Second, by learning the dice with me you can also get a behind the scenes peek into reading Tarot at the same time. There are parallels here. The oracle creator has created Tarot decks. Really good ones. If you’ve read this blog for a hot minute you know how much I like the Alleyman Tarot. I just bought the guidebook to his previous deck the Normal Tarot because it has the best cover art of any Tarot book ever – but more on that another day.
The oracle dice works so well with this method of learning because it was created by hands familiar with Tarot. The dice have all the depth and insight and use-ability of a 138 card Tarot deck.
Tarot is more than memorizing individual card meanings. There are layers, complexities and nuances. In the past it was called gifted. Psychic gifts are really more a matter of skill and practice. It’s like sports. Almost anyone can learn to play a sport – tennis for example. If someone has a natural gift for tennis, they are never going to get anywhere with it unless they learn the rules and swing a racket. Someone with no natural talent whatsoever can play tennis with learning and practice. The person who put in the time and work and practice would easily beat a person with natural talent who was playing their first game. Combine a small seed of Talent with work and practice over time – that can seem like some sort of special gift. No all of us can make it to Wimbledon, but any of us can certainly bang a ball around at the local park.
This series, this blog can’t teach Wimbledon level Tarot reading. It can’t teach you to read for other people, but you can learn some banging DIY Tarot reading for yourself.
But it take time, and blogging unfolds at a different pace. We could do this face by face together and move on to the next thing four months from now.
I don’t think you need that.
You’ve seen how this works.
Hurl dice at the table, get your hunches, mental images and intuitions about it. Combine that with the reference book and there you have it.
Now we are going to add another layer to it.
Seven Dane Asmund has given each dice its own topic and lord card. The topic is analogous to the the suit in the Tarot deck as I see it. Instead of the RWS Tarot’s four minor arcana suits with 14 cards each and the 22 card major arcana, we have basically 22 suits with six ‘cards’ each. In this second edition of the dice, the nuance is expanded and supplemented with the Lords of the Dice cards. The dice’s “lord” is a sort of symbolic spirit guide or guardian for that dice. The Lord card serves a similar purpose to the artwork on the ace cards of Tarot’s suits. The Ace in Tarot holds the core essence of the suit. By the same token, the lord card gives us insight into the essence of the individual die.
Interestingly, the influence flows both ways. After this, the ace cards feel even more important than they did before. I never thought of them as being potential guides and guardians before. But it works, at least for the number cards. The court cards in Tarot (page, knight, queen and king) have their own thing going on. That too, is a conversation for another day.
But that sets us up for the next little series within the series. We’ve looked at individual dice faces and at the same time chosen our seven learning dice out of the set of 22. Now instead of face by face, we’ll go die by die and look at each dice’s topic and lord card.
There really isn’t a good way to be very random about this, so that makes the active video pretty boring. For this next section of posts, I’ll be working from static photos of each die with its card. For YouTube, I’ll just share the tictok instead of filming the dice roll. It’s just more visually interesting at this point.
Please join me tomorrow when we pick up the “Collector of Selves” in more detail in part 2.
video / photo by the author of Publishing Goblin’s Oracle dice second edition, used with permission.
I’m not saying Tarot isn’t adulting. Learning, questioning, applying, doing all we can to be a better person; that’s actually the adultiest of adulting we can do.
I’m talking oil changes, errands and helping family kind of adulting. Tomorrow is shaping up to be a busy day, so here is your energy look at the week ahead a little early. I plan on taking this batch of advice myself, as I often do.
If these posts ever seem wrong or off or not for you….you can do like I do. Either draw a different batch of cards for yourself to get a more targeted individual read. If you aren’t the DIY type, no worries. Email Tarot is always open and I’m happy to help. Even when it’s busy, I can carve out time to pay attention to an email reading. It’s my strength. Just like our current energy card.
The fading energy card is six of pentacles.
Sometimes the six is about literal generosity, giving and sharing money or other tangible resources. Sometimes it talks about the intangible, speaking of a generous nature or a generosity of spirit. Today, the card brings in elements of both, reminding us give and take, ebb and flow. It feels like a reminder that we get out of life what we put into it. That in turn brings to mind the 90s song “Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
Physical or philosophical, now is the time to find your flow before attention needs to shift to other things.
The other thing our attention my shift toward very soon, if it hasn’t already, is Strength. Just like the major arcana Death card always talks about change and not literal death, the Strength card always talks about strength of character and fortitude. This feels very simple and straightforward. Tap into your inner strength, endurance, and courage now while you can.
@bobthewritingcat is one of my favorite Instagram accounts. Bob the cat, through the opposable thumbs and internet access of his human Jenny Graves, often tells us to “gird our loins” against the inevitable approach of yet another Monday. That is the feeling here. The Strength card is like that today: gird your loins, spool up your best people skills, batten down any loose hatches, there might be a minor kerfuffle on the horizon.
The Growing energy is the three of swords. From the decks that I’ve seen, it is always a dire looking card. Like every other card, it has different shades and threads of meaning. The word “petty” is really stepping forward today, along with “quintessential ‘karen'” Be on the lookout for inane squabbles and back-stabby sort of pettiness “from all the usual sources” It might work your last nerve, but that’s where the strength and flow from earlier can come in handy. If you can see the petty squabbles as just that, and deal with the week from a place of strength and flow and calm, it will be easier to get through this particular burp in the energy flow. Girded loins will prevent frayed nerves if you’ll permit that really odd way of saying it.
Overall the feel of the week right now isn’t bad or foreboding as much as just plain weird and potentially annoying.
Assuming the adulting goes to plan (HA!) next up is Wednesday’s “Learn With Me” now that we have picked 7 random dice to learn with, we’ll get a little more meta with it and look at the general meaning of each individual die and it’s “Lord Card” which gives each one of the dice it’s own subject or realm, akin to the arcana and suit meanings in Tarot. In this series of posts, I explore the Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice and learn to use it in the same methodical way I taught myself to read Tarot back in the day and over the years since. The process gives you a small behind the scenes peek into the intuition development process.
Thank you for reading! This free Tarot content is fueled by your support through private Tarot readings, memberships, paid subscriptions, and ko-fi coffee. Likes, blog follows, and social media shares are always much appreciated.
See you at the next sip!
This free Tarot reading is fueled by your support: Your likes, social media shares, blog follows, paid memberships and virtual ko-fi coffees are all very much appreciated!
Tarot isn’t tied to time, even in these little readings that look just at the week ahead.
That is the whole reason I don’t do classic “past-present-future” readings. Tarot is about energy, and energy is all about flux and flow. It doesn’t keep to a schedule. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has tells us … “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” By the same token, the universe is under no obligation to match our calendars and schedules.
Sometimes the best Tarot can do is to help us make our way through the unknowable chaos as best as we can.
As methodical as we may try to be about it, the way Tarot does that is by engaging our pure, raw, natural human intuition.
My method and structure for these readings is that the right side card represents energy that is fading at the moment and probably won’t have a large influence during the week. The middle card is the dominant energy, our primary food for thought or the suggested tactic for getting through the week. The left card is growing energy that may have progressively more influence as the week goes on. This is an idea or issue that is on the horizon and warrants our keeping a weather eye on it as the pirate movies say.
Sometimes intuition comes along and chucks that whole structure right out the window.
Today, the energy is less about the general flow of the week and more about individual processes. Instead of a growing energy that gradually replaces a fading one, this is more about three energies that are simultaneously present, but in different proportions. The mental image here is a sound mixing board, with all of those little slidey things that let you turn up some parts and down others. The CD player I had back in the 80s had something like that on it, and of course we all had the bass turned up to max…but that’s beside the point.
I think the real point is that we are all creating our own individual mixtape of energies this week and there is no real overarching collective zeitgeist for a change. That individuality in the middle of the collective is kind of the core message of the thing: Stand strong in your individuality. That will in turn allow you to better show up for your life and for the important people in it. When that happens, life will in turn show up for you when you need it.
Here the mental image shifts to one of those speckled quartz granite countertops, with all the pieces being part of the one smooth stone. We are individuals with individual integrity (knight of swords), yet we are all connected (three of cups)
Typically the Knight of Swords is about courage, daring, and pushing beyond your comfort zone. But what if your comfort zone IS the daring thing?
We live in – ah – interesting times.
For some, living in their true, authentic comfort zone can be a truly death defying act. For those of us who are not targets of hatred and bigotry (yet), for us to not be our fully authentic self is an act of cowardice by comparison.
In short, occupy your comfort zone. Fully. With gusto.
The internet says to show up for ourselves. When we have the courage to find our comfort zone and stake a claim to it, then we are better able to be there for other people in their quest to do the same. The Knight of Swords connects to the Three of cups.
When you show up for life in a way that is true to yourself and emotionally present for those you care about then life will show up for you. It can and will reciprocate in a deep and lasting way as symbolized by the Two of Cups.
Define your comfort zone Be fully in your comfort zone – with gusto. Then be in your comfort zone for and with others. Then life can meet you at the edges and make the comfort zone a little bigger.
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I love, love, love a rainy Saturday. I’m going to knit and drink coffee (unless someone orders a private email reading. Those are open this weekend too.)
Which is which basically today’s Tarot advice. Big dramatic spiritual learning doesn’t have to happen every single solitary day. It’s OK to follow your mood, especially in esoteric, energy or spirituality related things.
Outside of prescription medication and basic bodily functions, I can’t think of much that IS mandatory every single day … unless you want it to be.
That includes Tarot.
Reading cards for the same question over and over is a bad move for a host reasons. Reading at all needs a break every now and then.
Stop questing and searching for a few hours. Give it a rest.
USE what you already know. Integrate your spirituality as it stands now and make it a part of who you are today.
You can quest more later, when you feel the need. It isn’t something to force yourself to do.
The Tao Te Ching is often translated as the WAY of virtue. Ways are paths, ways are methods.
It is about making friends with yourself and your surroundings as things are right now even as you move forward. That includes days when you work hard to improve yourself, and days when you enjoy your favorite hobbies or pay attention to your sleeve increases.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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