twin flame – Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot

My Tarot Valentine ’24: Ace of Wands

Relationships begin with you.

Loneliness hurts.

It doesn’t feel good to want to be in a romantic relationship but not be. It is painful to feel cut off if you are an extrovert and it is painful to be pushed into uncomfortable social situations if you are an introvert. That particular kind of romantic loneliness can take over your mood and your mindset. It can grow large and block out the view of other things. After all, that particular kind of love and connection is profoundly important to so very many people.

Shallow platitudes are everywhere: “Be grateful for the things you already have” “Happiness comes from within.” People in the throes of loneliness aren’t necessarily in the mood for a namby-pamby woo-woo hand holding kumbaya viewpoint. Sometimes you just want to have a glass of wine and feel sorry for yourself.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your search for that special someone is just give up.

Don’t look for your soulmate, be their soulmate first.

The ace cards are the first card of a suit so they carry a “beginning energy” but not necessarily the brand new beginning energy that you see with the Fool card in the major arcana. It’s not quite the full on second chance new beginning of the Judgement card either. Ace cards are more like a fresh direction within an ongoing process or project.

If you are feeling lonely the Ace of Wands is suggesting a new direction, an adjustment, a minor rethinking about romance.

Ace cards also carry the essence of the suit. Wands are associated with the classical element fire, inner passions, philosophy, spirituality and our relationship with ourselves.

How can something so seemingly self involved help you to find and nurture an intimate relationship with someone else? Isn’t this exactly the realm of Cups cards?

It has to begin with you.

What do you want in a soulmate? (Or whatever you want to call them. I’m an old school Richard Bach reader, so “soulmate” feels like the natural term.)

What would you think of a person who is attracted to a victim? What would you think of someone who was attracted to or aroused by someone who is hurting? Are they compassionate – or are they a predator? Do you want to be loved – or pitied?

Who do you find attractive? Would YOU be more attracted to someone who is laser focused on the very thing they lack and and wrapped up in an imagined but uncertain future – or would you be more attracted to someone who was happy and content and fulfilled right here and right now?

Like attracts like. Be the soulmate you want to have in your life.

Put your time and attention into all the OTHER things you love EXCEPT the search for a soulmate. Do every darn thing ELSE that you enjoy and that makes you happy and makes you fully you. Lighting those inner fires also lights a signal flare. It shines a spotlight on where you are so the right relationships for this place and time can find you.

Think of the ace of wands as giving you the spark to start the process.

My Tarot Valentine is a collection of romance themed Tarot readings from Tarotbytes blog and TaoCraft Tarot blog. It is available as an instant download in the Sage Words Tarot shop

Still nope

To Valentine or not to Valentine

Tarot is immensely valuable as a source of advice. It gives us good ideas about what we maybe should DO.

Tarot is equally valuable as a source of caution. It can give us good ideas about things we should NOT do.

It isn’t a matter of good vs bad. I’m talking about the descriptive quality of things, not our internal judgement about those things. Hot or cold, light or dark, attract or repulse, yin or yang, do or do not; any of it can be good or bad for an individual situation or reading.

Sometimes a good, old fashioned, terse, to the point, flat-out “nope” is the best answer you can get from a reading.

Friday’s blog post is a perfect example of how a resounding NOPE can lead to better things.

Friday’s post? You’re right. There wasn’t one.

I came rolling into the new year with the big idea of blogging Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with this, your friendly neighborhood weekend newsletter. I also came rolling in full well knowing that part time, creative and intuition driven ventures never go to plan. (Ducks? Rows? Nope. Squirrel Rave? Wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is the week when our block was getting line replacements and upgrades. I’m very OK with that because I personally am a huge fan of safe, clean water and functional indoor plumbing.

I’m equally good with shelving the post for the day when the jackhammers and trench diggers were bringing concentration and focus to a halt. Writing that day was a big nope.

Thus we were back to my second favorite internet meme

Interestingly enough, the post was about a three card yes/no reading with a big old nope for the answer.

We can talk about how to do a yes/no reading and the Zombie Cat alter ego persona thing on another day. I do yes/no readings for kicks and giggles mostly, but they always have a useful thread of real insight buried int them, too. They can be helpful in nudging things one way or another when you really can’t make up your mind about something. Really big, important life decisions are better served by a more traditional layout style, but this layout is for small but not ignore-able decisions. These readings really are like Two-Face’s coin toss in Batman or that famous pool ball toy.

My question was about should I do a “My Tarot Valentine” series this year, like the readings from past years that I have collected into an eBook by the same name. On one hand, I really am not feeling it this year. On the other hand, romance readings are fairly popular and top of mind around Valentine’s Day. and the whole point of doing all of this is to help people sort things out. (“Tarot doesn’t tell you what is going to happen in life, Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens”)

Long story short, the answer is no.

I don’t stop there with my yes or no readings. I look at what message beyond yes or no that the cards used to determine the answer may have to offer. In this case, The Sun, the six of wands, and the ace of pentacles. I’ll spare you the behind the scenes thought process, but I distill the message down to “do what makes you feel the most at peace with the topic an happiness and income will follow in time.”

The really cool/weird thing is that these two NOPEs conspired to spark a brainwave. If it weren’t for the coincidental nope to writing on Friday, I would have posted as scheduled and set it aside as done rather than have another two days to ponder the whole thing. If the cards had been a yes instead of a no, I wouldn’t be writing about this whole process at all and instead would be trying to drum up a new “My Tarot Valentine Series.

As is often the case with this kind of work, synchronicity conspired to spark an idea, one I hope will allow Tarot to be helpful to somebody, somewhere.

I’m doing “My Tarot Valentine” – but not in the usual romance focused pink hearts and roses sort of way. Oh no. You aren’t getting off that easy if you you dare read this year.

This year you will be asked to throw some love at your mirror. This year the romance will rebound. This year we are going to do a study in the suit of wands – your relationship with yourself. If you can’t be happy in a relationship with yourself alone, how can you hope to be happy in a relationship with someone else?

Don’t get me wrong. Love, romance, marriage, partnerships are all vitally important. Especially if you’ve found that person that fits you like air fits your lungs. But for those who want that, but haven’t discovered it yet, the hallmark holiday can be, let’s just say, annoying.

Wands are our inner passions Wands are our inner fire. Maybe their light can show us all a good way to go this February.

If you are interested in yes/no fun readings, a more traditional romance reading, or Tarot on another topic entirely, please click HERE to order your email or video readings any time, no appointment needed.

Soulmates and the sum of the parts

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, Soulmantes and the sum of the parts with the two of cups.

Hey there. Welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card it the Two of Cups.

Nevermind the Lovers from the major arcana, THIS is the card you want to see in a love, romance or relationship reading. This is a card that most often resonates with long term, committed, loving, satisfying relationship. It is associated with marriage, handfasting or any life long commitment between any two human beings.

But like anything this is a yin-yang, giving-getting two-sided coin.

Remember that old candy commercial about chocolate and peanut butter? Peanut butter is delicious on its own. It’s something to eat by the spoonful if you ask me. Chocolate is sublime, the more cacao the better in my book. Love the dark stuff. Together they are extra. Together they are more than either alone.

The best romances are like that.

The worst ones are too, except the “extra” is added to the not-good side of things. Kind of like those generic candies that use terrible quality ingredients and are tasteless, weird textured and generally unpleasant.

Personally, I don’t buy into the whole other half, twin flame idea. I mean, think about it for a minute. Who would you rather spend your life with? Would you rather be with someone who expects you to complete them or someone who is a true partner adding their battery to your mutual light? Would Ironman have flown away yelling “you complete me” if Pepper was anything less than a fully independent phenomenon in and of herself? If you need someone to complete you, isn’t that a way of controlling you too? If someone needs you to complete them isn’t that controlling you too?

Good romance isn’t built on need. In a good romance both parts give and get, get and give. It isn’t about two parts completing a circuit, it is about two fully charged batteries powering up the full circuit and shining a light brighter than either one battery could alone.

Romances are like those candies. The best result doesn’t come from peanut butter looking for more peanut butter in order to make them into better peanut butter. The best result doesn’t come from cocoa butter looking for a cacao beans to make it into better chocolate. The symbiotic extra can’t happen if you are looking for another half to make a whole. The extra only happens when two free standing and fully good things work together to make the magic happen.

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Thanks for reading & listening. I’ll see you at the next sip!