Tag: the moon

Daily Meditation Tarot

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

Available for purchase in the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop

May is both National Meditation Month and National Mental Health Awareness Month.

Tarot has a part to play in both, especially in the form of one card daily meditation style Tarot readings.

I explain how to start your own daily meditation Tarot practice, which is kind of a misnomer since you don’t have to do it every single day. As I see it, the “daily” part comes from the way the Tarot reading takes a “just for Today” approach, much the same as the Reiki precepts.

By not focusing on personal development, past events, predicting the future or any other thing, drawing a card just for today is very akin to mindfulness meditation.

Tarot in general can be very stress reducing, and have helpful mental and emotional benefits in that way. I’ve seen it dozens upon dozens of times when I was doing in-person readings. The body language was clear as a bell; people’s shoulders would drop, their face would relax, they’d sit back in their chair a little more. Tarot readings offer a degree of healthy mental and emotional relief.

Life is less stressful when we understand the situation a little better or can formulate a plan for moving forward, hopefully both.

Tarot can help with that understanding. Like a meditation practice, when you add up those small, incremental bits of relief it can amount to something larger.

Meditation and mental health advocates have been saying these things for years. Reiki’s “Just for today” precepts is an example. Taoism and Buddhism give us the idea of change and impermanence. Everything is always in motion and change is a part of life. Death, Temperance, The Moon, The Wheel, the Two of Pentacles and other cards carry many of the same ideas.

PeaceTarot can teach you to find this Tarot comfort for yourself, even if you don’t own a Tarot deck. This simple method teaches you how to draw and read a daily Tarot card, gives a peace-themed meaning for every card in a RWS style Tarot deck PLUS three different techniques for choosing a Tarot card meaning if you don’t have a Tarot deck at hand.

PeaceTarot is available as a .pdf download and is available for purchase now from the Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop

Choose Your Own Tarot Card: Inner Light

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

Think of your question or the coming week. Choose your card, right or left. Pause the video if you need time. Restart to see the reveal and get your reading below.

Page of Wands: “Know Thyself” You have to know your own nature before you become at peace with it. Look for a way to nourish the light within.

The Moon: Energy cycles. Look for the larger pattern behind whatever is troubling you. The moon shines by reflected light. Your world reflects your answer.

Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC, used with permission.

Learn With Me: Lenormand, The Moon

Learn Lenormand and Tarot together

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There is more to unpack here than it seems.

From a purely intuitive point of view, when the card turned over the message was simple and clear: Trust your own intuition right now. You already know what you are seeking to know. Trust your gut. Even if you don’t want to face it, deep down, you already know.

But from the “Let’s Learn Lenormand!” point of view, things are evolving.

As I dug into some other online resources to learn about the card, it starts to get contradictory and confusing. Honestly I’m not surprised. Lenormand is the quinessential large layout and this deck is very tied to that method and therefor that energy.

On one hand, the Moon in this deck vibes just like the Moon in the RWS based decks.

Which makes sense, because according to some sources, the deck is based on the Thoth Tarot and Thoth oracles while other sources say it is from oracle cards created directly by Marie Lenormand. Or both.

It doesn’t really matter except for vague background context which may or may not be helpful in any given individual reading. Like I’ve said over and over – no matter what oracle you use or how you use it, the REAL oracle is our own innate human intuition and psychic senses. The cards, runes, charms, crystal balls, bone or chicken gizzards are all just amplifiers and clarifiers that help access our intuition with greater ease and to communicate it to other people with greater clarity.

The Lenormand specific interpretations are all over the place. Some say it is just like the RWS moon. Others say it is nothing like the RWS moon. Christopher Buther, this deck’s author, basically connects it with intuition like other Tarot, but changes the meaning quite a bit based on adjacent cards.

My hunch the message here is to show just how interdependet the card interpretations are. The grand tableau layout using all of the deck is very interconnected and very interdependent.

It may be time for us to move on from one card readings and start with a tres petit tableau to play with the interconnected and mutually modifying card relationships.

Although, admittedly, I’m beginning to think good old Marie used the cards a prop as much as anything, laying them all out on the table and letting the psychic reading fly, occasionally making something up about the cards in front of her to justify what intuition had just told her. Which is as good of a use of the cards as any. They are props and prompts in the end, no matter how structured or methodical our approach to the cards may be.

*shrugs* who knows

There is your Tarot lesson for today: Trust your intuition.

Trust it when you are using Tarot cards, no matter how you use the cards. Trust it in pure form just out and about in daily life. Like a full moon in the middle of the night, trust your own good intuition to light the way.

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!

The Day Shift and the Moon

The energy path for the week unfolds.

The three cards for this week in Monday’s Energy Path reading were:

  • Fading Energy: Three of Pentacles
  • Current Energy: Five of Cups
  • Growing Energy: The Moon

I had the bright idea that we’d revisit the growing energy on Fridays to see if and how the week’s energies have unfolded compared to the reading.

Today seems to be a better day for that look back. It feels like this set of cards is right on target reading the week. I get no sense of the Three of Pentacles at all. The Five of Cups is in full force today, but the energy overall feels on the precipice of a gentle shift.

Here is what we talked about a few days ago:

Growing energy: The Moon. The Moon Tarot card is about intuition, psychic ability, spiritual journeying and all of that, true enough, but this time it is pointing more toward energy of natural cycles. The moon is tied to the cycles of the tides. The moon has the obvious phases plus it’s yearly drift from being at its farthest from Earth (apogee) and being a bit closer (perigee). The moon is cycles within cycles, gradual drifts and shifts. This month is a close-orbit time of year, what people have started calling a “supermoon.” All of this points to the cyclic energy. All the stagnation energy from the past several weeks might begin to move, albeit calmly and slowly. Let it take its own pace for the best outcome. You can’t make the tide rise any faster than it does. Let your energy level and emotional levels take their own natural pace, too. Things will cycle through, be patient.

Before we get to the Moon’s energy, we have today and the Five of Cups.The best way I can think of to describe today’s energy is “slack tide.” There is a point in time during every tide cycle where the water is still. The tide has hit its highest or lowest point for that cycle, and is still for a moment before it turns to flow in the opposite direction. Today is that point of stillness.

The Five of Cups has a feeling of melancholy and remembrance.

I am reminded of several of the mental images that have come with collective energy readings over the past few years, largely to do with the Covid pandemic and political turbulence in the the U.S. They were images dealing with impending storms and the aftermath.

Healing is never sudden nor does it march along in a straight line. There are cycles within it. There are steps back with the steps forward. There are times of looking back and looking around, remembering, acknowledging and honoring to go along with bittersweet times of moving forward.

There is a sense of anticipation, of movement, of that first step forward after a time of taking a step back.

I am reminded of the line in the song “Cloudbusting” that “something good is going to happen.”

Key word here, today, is “going.” This might not be the time quite yet. For now, allow your feelings whatever they are. Be in your moment, whatever it is. The cycles will turn soon enough.

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

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Turning Over August

This is the first time in a while (8 months actually, I googled it) that the day of the month is a Monday, so the pathway reading would follow the weekend turnover reading in 24 hours (or less depending on when you read things.)

Reading on top of reading on top of reading is never a good idea. WHY – your guess is as good as mine. I can see where the old school way of saying it might be something like “the cards get mad and stop talking to you.” Intuitively, energetically, it feels like that. Maybe it is something about human psychology. If it is, the seven of cups captures it beautifully with its meanings of dithering, overthinking, decision paralysis, and trusting your gut / emotions / instincts.

Trust might be the real core of it – trusting your intuition.

Asking over and over is asking from a place of mistrust in yourself, or even fear. Asking over and over might indeed be fishing for the answer you want…not the true one. That is a lack of trust in the process too. Here I am reminded of the Adam Savage quote on a tested.com t-shirt “Follow the process, not the plan.” How often in the past have we been so focused on one thing that we rejected something better when it fell right into our lap.

My favorite example of this comes from the book “One Last Time” by John Edward. Please read it for the details. He is a well known psychic and medium and has a really interesting story. I’m paraphrasing heavily here. He was very close with his Grandmother and after school they would watch the soap opera “The Guiding Light” together. As I remember it, they were open and talked about life after death. When the time came that his grandmother was near death due to illness, they made the agreement that she would communicate with him if it was at all possible. They set up three secret words between the two of them that if he heard them from a reading, he would know beyond doubt that it was her and that the communication was real. He said the first two came easily and quickly, but the third was their shared fanhood of “The Guiding Light” soap opera. In reading after reading nothing came and he became frustrated, and almost gave up on the whole thing. Multiple times he got references to lighthouses, like the ones on the New England coast. But nothing about TV, or soap opera. Finally in a slap-my-forehead moment he connected the dots that he had his answers multiple times over. The lighthouse was the guiding light he needed to hear, not the TV soap opera reference he expected to hear.

On one hand, his persistence and repeated questioning paid off. On the other he nearly threw away a profound experience that launched his career (and helped others through his readings) because of preconceived notions. If asking over and over isn’t giving you an answer.

I know that is a loooong way to go to get around to today’s Tarot Turnover. Long story short: spirit speaks in symbols and whispers. Trust your intuition. If you feel the need to keep asking, first revisit the readings and answers you have in hand. It that doesn’t help, give the problem a little time to breathe. Give it time for decisions to made and intentions to be set. Look back at the answers you have, then persist. If you are lucky, one way or the other you’ll get your lighthouse.

Today, my intuition is telling me to combine the weekend turnover intuition exercise and the path through August Tarot reading. Don’t worry….we got this. Here are this Month’s cards:

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Tidal Flow

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: The Moon and psychic tidal flow.

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blogcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Moon from the major arcana.

Major arcana cards, being what they are, have more threads of meaning and are often a balance of heavier opposites than we see in the minor arcana.

The moon is associated with spiritual journeying, wisdom, intuition, psychic ability, dreams. Ted Andrews, in his Animal Wise Tarot deck, also ties in changing, communication and guidance. The point about change captures my attention today.

The Moon card is very much tied to the element of water and its connotations and its ties with the suit of cups. I feel like the Moon is connecting with the Queen of Cups card a little bit. The literal moon’s gravity reaches into the depths of the ocean and pulls it all into high tide. The Queen of Cups is said to be looking into her cup of water to pull spiritual knowledge from the depths of the human psyche.

There are psychic tides as much as there are literal ones. Our intuitive energies ebb and flow as much as physical ones. Self care extends to the spirit as much as to the physical. Sometimes tides surgh and we are called to speak our truths from rooftops. Sometimes they ebb and time comes for us to take in rest and comfort in the truths of ritual and shouted ideas of others.

Listen to your inner spiritual tides as well as the demands of corporal being. The Moon card is a call to your spiritual tidal flow the care and attention that it needs today.

Thank you so much for listening.

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YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Circles of Life and Fortune

You choose the Tarot card. Pause the video or blogcast if you need some time. Then restart to see or hear the reveal and get your Tarot reading

https://youtu.be/0TC3suFRkGM

Today’s YouChoose works the same as always: pick a card. You choose the card, you choose how to apply it. Pause the video if you want a minute to think about which card you want, then restart to see the reveal and hear the card interpretation.

To keep the reveal a surprise (because I know you have good instincts and will pick the right card for you) the video will stand alone without a transcript so there is no peeking.

Stay tuned for more short sip Tarot reading posts and an update about Spring ’22 hours.

Thanks for watching!

Comments and questions are moderated but welcome below. Select replies post in the blog.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Look or Listen

Whether you watch or listen, you can interact with the cards to choose the message that was meant for you.

https://youtu.be/XxwocWrE9uw

Starting now, you can look or listen to YouChoose Interactive Tarot. Blog posts are available as audio in the TaoCraft Tarot podcast on Anchor FM, Spotify, Stitcher and more.

If you are watching, the videos are the same as always. Choose your card, then see the reveal, just like always.

If you are listening to audio only, you still choose your card and how you apply it. The choice just comes at a different part of the process. If you can’t see or visualize your choice of card at the beginning, listen through to the end and then choose the card and description that best fits your needs. You are still interacting with the cards and still using your intuition to guide you to the parts of the discussion that is most meaningful for you today.

That being said, I’ll leave you to watch the video above.

Thanks for watching, reading AND listening. See you at the next sip!

Sunday Turnover: Tarot By Moonlight

Sunday Tarot Turnovers are a blog exclusive intuition building exercise for your weekend. Most Mondays I post “YouChoose” on YouTube where you choose when to watch the video, you choose how to use the reading (daily inspiration, answer to a top of mind question, etc) and you choose the card for the reading.

On Sunday, we flip the scrip. Instead of choosing a card, you choose an interpretation. I’ll list a variety of meanings that have come up for the card over the years either from the sources cited or from my own readings. If you use the search bar, you can see old posts about the card on this blog or visit my old Tarotbytes blog on the Modern Oracle Tarot archives which is searchable too. If you see “Quirk & Flotsam” my old two owl logo then you’ll know you are in the right place.

Anyway…let’s get to this.

Today’s card is….

  • Natural cycles, ebb and flow (Ted Andrews, Animal Wise Tarot)
  • Spiritual Journey (Diane Morgan, Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao)
  • yin energy, yin power, yin effectiveness
  • gentleness
  • intuition
  • manifestation (A.E. Waite, A Pictorial Key to the Tarot)

There is no answer to this. All of these interpretations are valid. You can’t deny the expertise of people like Ted Andrews and Edward Waite. Still, the only way to know the right meaning for the card for you today. Knowing and researching card meanings is the foundation, the beginnig. These Sunday Turnover exercises are a way to practice elevating your DIY Tarot a step further. This will help you use the cards and documented meanings to connect to your own intuition and decide which meaning is best for you right here, right now, today, whatever day you read this.

If that day happens to be today, I hope you are enjoying this lovely Sunday. All the best to you!

Sip of Tarot: Flow by Moonlight

Change is afoot. Everything ebbs and flows like the tides. The moon reminds us to use our intuition to sense those cycles and flow with them. You can’t fight the whole ocean alone. Flow with the energy, allow yourself to sense it, and you are not alone. The whole of the ocean and the whole of the cosmos is with you.

It’s not forever. Good times will come again and again like waves on the shore.