Understanding a situation and making a plan of action nudges your thinking away from the future and “what if?” and brings it back to the hear-and-now. That shift in perception can interrupt and ease worries and anxieties. Lots of energy here today – it’s not often that we see double major arcana cards. This one is an attention-getter.
What’s happening – The World. Good, bad or indifferent, anything is possible. Sure, bad things are possible, but good things are probably just as likely. You steer toward where you look. Look at good things. This card traditionally has a positive vibe. “The world is your oyster” applies here.
What to do – The Tower. Be as OK as you can be with unexpected twists, turns and surprises. It doesn’t come naturally to many of us, but the ability to adapt is a survival skill. Adapt to find your good-future-building world oysters, so to speak.
If it isn’t natural for you, this is a time to push the envelope and deliberately work on mental, emotional, or even physical flexibility (a good stretch is stress-relieving. Mind follows body as much as the body follows the mind) If all else fails, if you can’t adapt to change, BE the change. BE the twist, turn and surprise.
Stay tuned for more Tarot. Likes, subs and shares are always appreciated! See you at the next sip! – Sage
Sage Sips is tarot inspired meditations in the time it takes to sip your coffee
Special shout out to all of the energy sensitives in the US.
What a couple of weeks it has been *insert your favorite interjection or expletives here*
I don’t know about you, but I’m furious. I have a hunch we’ve entered into a crash course on shadow work and have to make fast friends with our dark side so we can survive theirs. Last week was not unicorn farts and marshmallows. Although the energy hasn’t quite stabilized yet – it feels like the pouring rain scene in the Star Wars prequel on that planet where Obi Wan discovered the clone army- it does feel like the storm front is starting to pass and we are beginning to get early glimpses of the aftermath.
Or put another way, the lightning bolt from the Tower card hit, and now we are in ten of swords mode.
I’ve done some private reading, for which I am SO grateful. The individual messages are breaks in the clouds and rays of sunshine in the storm of collective energy. Thank you all. I hope the readings help you as much as it has helped me to put things in a little more perspective.
Perspective looks both ways.
Perspective shows us where we are right now in the grand scheme of things (think World card). It includes our best guess and firm intentions for the future but it also includes lessons from the past that we can use now.
Camouflage is a survival technique seen in nature, and perfectly fine to use as long as you remember what is really underneath. Protection is valid too. Protect, preserve, celebrate and honor the true you, always.
I see you. I appreciate you.
The squirrels rave again. Blog posts are as unpredictable as ever. Private readings by email are always OPEN (even if delivery times vary and even if the superficial appearance changes a bit.)
Stay tuned. We’ll muddle through one way or another.
Oracle Dice & cards used with permission Publishing Goblin LLC. Card art by czarfunkle
It’s called a lithotripter.
Life takes you to some pretty strange places. Writing a blog post comparing an oracle card to a high end medical device was not on my bingo card for today, but here we are. That odd combination is what the collective energy – “spirit” if you will – is using to communicate today.
When we first rolled – drew – something – this die to be one of the seven learning dice, the single face we rolled was “ruin.”
It has all of the obvious parallels with Tarot’s Tower card.
When I first saw the Lord Card for the obstacle die, it was of those “I got nothin'” moments, so naturally I went to the source material, the guidebook, for inspiration. The moral of that story is you won’t always be able to read every little thing purely intuitively. I’m only talking about reading for yourself, I do NOT teach you to read for other people, ever. But that’s a topic for another day. Long story short, when you get nothing intuitively from a card or dice or whatever oracle you are using, it is perfectly valid to combine the silent oracle whatever-it-is (in this case the card/die combo) with other inspiration (the room around you, the song on the radio, the guide book, some other guidebook – anything can help.)
One aspect of the card speaks of wrongful accusations, anything from the dog ate my homework blame dodging to being the chosen fall-guy, the one rejected and reviled by those whom the fall-guy has faithfully served, and maybe still serves.
I get a black sheep of the family vibe there.
Rather than the bringer of underserved accusations and derision, the Accuser can also be the bringer of obstacles. That can be experienced as the doom, gloom, destruction and chaos of the Tower and Devil cards. There is, however, another layer of meaning proposed.
The most important lessons are sometimes learned the hard way, and in doing so that removes self-imposed obstacles and clears the way to better things.
The accuser, as with light-bringer Lucifer, challenges us and blocks us to show us our weaknesses, our ignorance, our undue attachments.
Or, as the adage goes, that which doesn’t kill us can make us stronger.
The Accuser bangs at us and challenges us – but maybe, just maybe, all that banging and destruction and chaos is the sound of obstacles being removed.
A lithotripter uses shock waves to break up a harmful kidney stones into small enough pieces that it can be passed harmlessly out of the body by the urinary system. The kidney stone is crushed and essentially destroyed. Sudden destruction removes the blockage and makes things better in a literal way.
The same is true of The Accuser’s energy. Yes, absolutely, sometimes The Devil, The Tower or The Accuser is a storm warning for us, asking us to take action because bad stuff happens in life and forewarned is forearmed.
Other times, obstacles come our way to make us stronger (spiritual weight lifting?) For we humans, the hard way is the only way we learn some lessons.
On occasion, if we learn well, that banging we hear is actually the sound of obstacles being destroyed instead of our impending doom.
I’m a TED talk junkie. Not that I watch a lot. I’m an encouragble multitasker and tend to let TV be audio wallpaper. But not TED talks. Those get my full attention, so I don’t watch them as often as I’d might otherwise.
One of my favorites is by author Elizabeth Gilbert speaking about creativity:
I don’t claim to be a creative genius, but some rare sometimes ideas will drop in that feel like they have been tossed there from from some outside source. It’s different than deliberately doing a reading or listening to intuition on someone else’s behalf. It’s random, unexpected, otherworldly-feeling and worthy of attention. It’s closer to the Tower card than the Four of Swords in that respect. Ideas like that feel especially important when they are sparked by one source but seem to connect to something wildly different. This morning, for example, connected an online article by Christopher Penzack about the symbolism of mountains with the memory of a 1970s TV commercial.
Most of you are probably too young to remember the lifesavers candy commercial where a guy climbs a frozen, isolated mountain to ask the guru on top to define the meaning of life, which of course, is pepp-o-mint lifesavers. It is like the part of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series where the most advanced super computer Deep Thought calculates the answer to the ultimate meaning to life, the universe and everything is actually 42. There was a snapple commercial with the same sort of trope where a guy goes to a farm, seemingly in remote China, to ask an elderly man how white tea is made…”you find the small young leaves, and you pluck them” … or something like that.
Climbing a mountain or traveling to somewhere remote and exotic is the classic symbol for spiritual growth and development. Both are really hard work. Outside of the comedic and marketing value, there is a real grain of truth to ‘climbing the mountain’ only to find that the mystic guru sitting on top is simple, pragmatic, and just like the rest of us.
Does that mean it wasn’t worth the climb?
No. Not at all.
THAT realization, the understanding that mystical gurus are like us and that we are like mystical gurus is in itself a great treasure. It’s worth the climb to discover the magic in the mundane. It’s worth the climb to realize that you can be your own mystical magical wise guru teacher person.
Green tea and peppermint candies are pretty good things to find too.
Trying a new thing: I am letting the YouChoose videos, unpolished as they may be, stand on their own for a while. That way there is no chance of spoilers in the text below.
I hope you’ll let me know what you think either in the comments or by email at taocrafttarot@gmail.com
If you have any questions about anything Tarot or have content requests, let me know that too! Comments are open and welcome as long as they aren’t spam.
PS…did you see the new logo? So excited about converting to it 🙂
Image copyright Ronda Snow 2019 Used with permission
“What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view” – Obi Wan Kenobi
Obi Wan nailed it. Sorry Bill.
Names, labels, adjectives, the power of words; all of those things have niggled at me off and on over the years. The niggling about names hasn’t stopped since we talked about it the other day in the “What is in a Name” post. That was a first step away from Shakespeare’s literalness about flowers. Let’s take it one step more.
Shakespeare was right, of course, in the most literal sense. You could name that particular fragrant flower a “rose” or a “gagglystank” or anything else, and the literal flower would still have the same chemicals causing the same fragrance, the same petals, the same stems, the same thorns and all the same physical attributes.
But, like business and website names, any name has more to it than just literal, physical descriptions. Names, like all of language, is about communication. If I say “rose” and you speak English, you know exactly what I mean. Not just a flower, but a particular type of flower with a particular set of physical attributes. You can probably imagine the scent, the petals, the stems, everything about them. If I say “gagglystank” to you, chances are you will have no idea what it means much less have a physical description come to mind. Gagglystank is a word that tells you a little about my feeling about the scent of roses, but is definitely not the NAME of anything. There is power in a name. Communication happens when things have a name. Communication conquers time and space. That is why “branding”….naming….matters. It is outward communication. A name is immediate, instant communication of what a thing is. TaoCraft Tarot is hint about what I do and my way of doing it.
Shakespeare’s roses (in addition to being a great idea for a band name) is about the literal, unchanging being of objects no matter what words are projected onto them. Names are more than the literal objects. Names are also about every intangible thing the tangible object symbolizes. Outward communication is one step away from the actual things. One more step takes us inward. Consider the psychology and emotional response to a rose.
If we called roses gagglystanks instead, would they really smell as sweet? What emotions and connotations would a different name elicit? I’m not fond of rose scent or anything too cloying or floral. Gagglystank is a perfectly good word to tell you how I feel about the way those specific flowers smell. But it can’t be the name of the thing, because it doesn’t communicate to you. It isn’t a meaning our language has agreed to use. It doesn’t capture the visual beauty. It doesn’t capture the emotional response to the flower generated by generations of love-symbolism our culture has connected to that flower. When we see or hear the name “rose” all at once we understand the literal thing, the things the symbolizes, and likely experience a positive emotional feeling to go along with it all.
First you have a thing. Then you have a name-word for the thing. Then you have all the abstract things that go with the literal thing, all wound up in an emotional response to the whole word-name-symbolism package. Names means a lot.
This second-step away from Shakespeare’s roses is the place where Tarot cards get their power. The cards have powerful images. The cards use powerful words. They prompt us to take that next step beyond literal things and outward communication in order to get right to the realm of symbolism, emotional connotations and, most importantly, inner response. The Tower comes to mind. Set aside the lighting and other images, lets talk about just the Tower alone for a minute. First you have a literal picture of a literal tall thing. You name it Tower, and without the picture, a Tarot reader can convey instant understanding of both the thing and the image. If I say “tower” then you know I’m talking about a big tall skinny outdoor object or part of a building. Then you bring in all the connotations of a tower: tallness, a higher perspective, potential isolation. The inner FEELING of the reader guides the seeker to the right connotation and symbolism, even when reader and seeker are the same person. The process of inward symbolic communication…the second step away from Shakespeare’s roses…is where a Tarot reading really happens. This kind of word and name driven inward communication is the same no matter if you are reading for yourself or someone else, nearby or at a distance.
The thing, the name of the thing, along with the symbolism, connotations, and emotions that the name carries are all part of intuitive communication. Names speak both outwardly and inwardly.
There is power attached to a name. That power can attach to any name for any thing in any language, but not every name carries that level of potency. Roses by other names may not smell as sweet except in the literal sense. Roses by their true name have a complex fragrance…from a certain point of view.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 
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