Tag: used with permission

Part of it All

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today The Alleyman, a Carl Sagan quote, and the Seven of Bells Tarot Card

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the seven of bells from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck and originally from the Floetner deck. The Alleyman’s Tarot is used with the permission of its creator Seven Dane Asmund. To learn more about Seven’s work and what is rapidly becoming my new favorite deck please visit the link below or in the podcast episode description. Yesterday, I posted a short first impression of the deck on the blog. I’ll put a link to that in the podcast description as well.

As an exercise in learning the deck, I’d like to use it for our daily short sip readings. I’ll give you my first impression purely intuitive reading from the card and then I’ll go to the guidebook written meaning and let you decide which resonates more for you on whatever given day you read or listen to this. To take a phrase from the Alleyman Podcast – it will be a collaboration, with the Alleyman’s blessing.

Not to mention that fits my lazy girl M.O. – I won’t have take the time to read the guidebook ahead of these first look. Doing an intuition-only first-look reading like this before reading the guide book page only goes to show how readable this deck and this deck’s concept really is.

When I drew this card, my attention was drawn to the central figure and the similarity between the figure’s texture and the rocks and surrounding ground. It reminded me of the Taoist principle that we are an inseparable part of the larger whole. Carl Sagan said that the Cosmos is “all that is or was or ever will be.”

That. Includes. Us.

Just like the cliche joke about the Dali Lama asing the hotdog salesman in New York to make him one with everything.

We are integral part of our life and circumstances. Because of that deep connection, we can impact it just as it impacts us in that eternal dance of cause and effect.

The notebook talks about this card representing a feeling of being trapped by circumstance and expectations, quote “you have been made into something other people need you to be” end quote. The guidebook agrees that you can shake off this dried-mud entrapment. You can return to feeling more yourself if you quote “find what made you this way and confront it” end quote.

To put it all together, it may be a sudden change or move at a glacial pace, but we can use our deep interconnectedness with the universe and we can use cause and effect to break free of what others expect of us and begin to be true to our expectations of ourselves instead.

Thank you so much for reading, watching and listening. There are companion video shorts on YouTube that show the Short Sip cards being drawn. Neither the videos or the blogcast are monetized so they rely on your support. Purchases on the blog website and monthly memberships through ko-fi all contribute toward creating this (almost) daily Tarot content.

Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated.

See you at the next sip.

For more information about The Alleyman’s Tarot and Seven Dane Asmund’s other work please visit Publishing Goblin, llc

Today’s Tarot: Twinkle On Little Star

I’m not the deck collector some readers are, but I have accumulated a fair few. A favorite is the Heart of Stars Tarot by Thom Pham who very graciously gave his permission for me to share the images (and the ones from his new deck, The Runes of Mannaz) with you.

It’s one of my favorite decks for two reasons. The most obvious reason, of course, is the gorgeous artwork. The other reason is his use of famous characters and scenes from movies and TV for most of the cards. That is just how my brain an intuition works. Pop culture is a wonderful communication tool. Not everyone is familiar with the classic Tarot images, but lots and lots of people are familiar with movies and TV. Movies, songs, TV shows come to mind all of the time when I am reading for clients It works. It communicates the idea of a card in a familiar, relatable way far over and above the classic symbolism of the Marseille or Waite Smith Tarot alone.

For example, when I drew the Star card today, the Madonna song “Lucky Star” from her self titled 1983 album popped to mind and is ear-worming there as we speak. That is in no way paranormal considering how much I like 80s music and the fact that this was one of my favorite albums in its time. But at the same time, it can’t be dismissed out of hand when it comes to understanding the card’s message for today.

Since it’s actually been a long time since I’ve heard the song, I googled the lyrics to see if there were any message hints there. It’s just a nice little bubblegum pop puppy-love kind of thing. The line that caught my attention is “you shine on me wherever you are.” That in turn reminded me of how we all, everyone on Earth, see the same stars in the same patterns. Stars connect us as a unified audience for the night sky as well as reminding us that we are, all of us, connected to the larger cosmos. Stars made the stuff that we are made of – literally. As Carl Sagan famously said, “We are star stuff.”

It’s significant, too, that The Star is one of only two cards in this deck NOT based on a famous character or movie scene. The woman on the card is anonymous, the every-woman or every-man. She is both uniquely individual and she is all of us.

Even with pop culture references, getting to the right message for a client (or blog/podcast/youtube audience takes a few steps. Sometimes, like today, a card will daisy-chain widely different ideas into one cohesive thought.

Lucky star reminds us we are connected, stars shine on all of us wherever we are. The figure on the Heart of Stars card is both unique, unknown, and symbollic of any or all of us. We are individuals, yet deeply connected. We are individuals together. Although the small points of light in the sky might look the same, there are many sizes and types of stars, all at a unique distance from us that is constantly changing. Stars are individuals together in the cosmos, as are we.

The Star, and the domino chain of intuition reminds us that we are each wonderfully, gloriously, beautifully unique and wonderfully, gloriously, deeply connected.