Ride and Abide

Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the knight of cups. I’m using the Alleyman’s Tarot deck, with the knight of cups card by Lacy Martin & Christine Scanlon.

The knight of cups has a little bit of surface contradiction to it. Knights are action oriented, while cups are water and emotions. At first glance, the obvious interpretation would be put your feelings into action.

That might be the case for you, that is the right thing for some days, but I don’t get a sense that is the message we need today. That isn’t the overall vibe I’m getting this morning.

Card reversals pop to mind a little here too. It’s a fair question. If this is about NOT acting on something, why wouldn’t the knight card be reversed?

We’ve talked about this in previous episodes where the card was reversed. Reversals aren’t all that. Like I said then, I take all aspects of the card into consideration during a reading be it positive, be it negative, be it neutral be it what have you. Today’s card is an example of that multifaceted consideration of an upright card.

There is nothing blocked, turbulent, complicated or cautioning about this energy message, so the card is not reversed. It sounds a little like a double negative when we talk about it this way. It’s sort of like the cartoon where a student tries to trick the teacher into letting him out of class by asking to please not never be dis-excused to the restroom or something like that.

“Sit down Carl!”

It also reminds me of a TikTok that I watched earlier today from Senator Cory Booker. If you have access, I encourage you to look for it and watch it too. It posted on Tuesday April 26, 2022 and was captioned “How I learned a lesson in nonviolence.” In it he talks about how emotions inform us less about the people and situations that provoke them and more about the places where we need to heal and grow. He wanted to act, but instead found a way to nonviolently abide with the situation and his emotions about it. Again, I urge you to find it and watch it and hear Senator Booker’s wisdom in his own words in this short but powerful video.

Here is another less elegant, less kind, less wise but perhaps more relatable example. It imagery is closer to older decks like Marseille and Waite Smith decks. On these you have your standard issue knight in shining armor on horseback, so you can read in all the usual tropes about chivalry and defensive honorable combat and so on. He is holding a chalice, which presumably holds water or wine or some drink.

Now, bring in a fairly well known anime. In the early seasons of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, our hero Jonathan had to fight an enemy while holding a goblet of wine without spilling any in order to graduate to the next level of his Sendo (Hamon) training. Good-guy hero in action with a glass of wine: See the similarities?

You have to be fully accepting and comfortable with your cup of wine to fight without spilling anything. You have to be fully comfortable and accepting of your emotions to move with them without sloshing your stuff all over other people. In short,make friends with your emotions as you move through your day.

Today’s advice isn’t to act ON our emotions but rather act WITH them. Today is a day to ride AND abide.

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Thanks again. I’ll see you at the next sip!

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