Tag: 2 of pentacles

Busy Sandwich

The two of pentacles is back to sandwich productivity between calls to seek balance.

Some times you have ebb and flow. Sometimes you have grab and sandwich and go.

Hello and welcome to Sage Words Tarot blogs and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast. I’m glad you are here. As always, these short sip readings are Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. On Mondays we get close to the whole cup by taking a three card look at the week ahead.

Also as always, none of this is a prediction. That whole fix your love life, meet your soulmate, win the lottery nonsense stems from horror movies, fiction and fantasy. Genuine Tarot has more in common with weather reports, folk art and psychology than predicting the future. If someone approaches you individually and offers you a reading that is on a par with those Nigerian prince spam emails and should be treated as such.

Finding a psychic you can trust is one of the things I talk about in Tao Craft Portfolio, but I’ll shamelessly self promote that later. Back to this week. The three cards reflect the general, collective energy environment and give general collective energy food for thought. These readings are made of ideas to inspire you or strategies to help you navigate the energy environment.

Or, like I’ve said for years under the Modern Oracle and TaoCraft Tarot blog names….the future is yours to create, not mine to predict. Tarot doesn’t predict what will happen in life. Tarot helps you to figure out what to do when life happens.

Balance is what is happening – or what we need to create this week.

The fading energy is Temperance, the current energy is the eight of pentacles and the growing energy is the two of pentacles. Long story short, it is a productivity sandwiched between advice to stay balanced.

The Two of Pentacles was fading previously. Now it’s making a comeback on the other side of the layout compared to last week. That hints at ebb and flow, or dynamic equilibrium.

The idea of dynamic balance, of balance in motion like a gyroscope, has been attached to the two of pentales a lot lately. Lately meaning the past couple of years, really.

Both the Temperance card and the two of pentacles card are associated with balance. Temperance is the gentler side of balancing, and today has the feeling of little nudges on both sides of the balancing equation. It reminds us of moderation, and not letting things get too out of control in the first place, but it also gives little nudges when we need to up the volume or intensity of something to achieve balance, like pouring into an empty cup. Temperance reminds of gentle mixing back and forth in order to gently moderate opposites before either gets extreme. There are other keywords like combining, creating, experimenting, but the moderation kind of balance energies are prominent today.

The two of pentacles is more active, and feels like the bigger adjustments that are needed when things have already gotten out of balance. The two of pentacles is more about hauling in the edge of the envelope after pushing it to the limit or pulling back when you are too far out over your skis.

You’ll notice both of these are active, moving concepts. Unless you are stacking Zen rocks or something, when it comes to human life, balance is tied to change. Inanimate, motionless object don’t maintain balance. They just fall.

My favorite example of dynamic balance is a unicycle rider. Watch someone on a unicycle. Staying balanced upright on a single wheel is a pretty good trick. It is difficult enough when you are constantly moving forward, but the really impressive thing is the way they can stay upright without travelling forward. But even then, they are not completely still. If you watch, the unicycle rider is making constant tiny back and forth movements in order to stay upright even when they aren’t moving over a distance.

Movement lends itself well to progress and productivity too.

This week we have movement sandwiched between two other kinds of movement.

“In the zone” comes to mind. There is a lot of science and physics images coming through with this reading.

First we had angular momentum and gyroscopes. Now I see a wave graph. The balance we need this week isn’t about a single point, like a ballerina holding a perfect arabesque, its about wave amplitude and staying in a range. It’s about dialing in the ups and downs to stay within a managable range, not about stopping the changes.

If there is one piece of advice in all three cards put together for this week it would be to keep moving, but adjust your tolerances. Things may be active and changing and productive and busy, but the trick to get through it all is to adjust the amplitude of the ups and downs so that they are managable.

You might not be able to turn of the noise, but you can adjust the volume.

You might not be able to hold the unicycle of life perfectly still, but you can adjust the movements so that it seems like you are staying upright in one place.

Be productive – go for it. Just don’t forget to put the busy in a sandwich of balance.

Thank you so much for reading and listening! Please visit the blog website or the ko-fi page. Your private readings, shop purchases, and virtual coffees all support creating these free weekly readings for everyone.

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Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

The Week Ahead: More Please!

Contented? More please! Sage’s Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it take to sip from your coffee

In Tarot, we talk a lot about what to do when things get bad. What do you do when things get good?

Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Short Sip podcast where it is all Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

This week’s energy has a lot of the Zen and Taoist philosophy influence that I wanted to honor in my previous blog name, TaoCraft Tarot. To be clear, I don’t mean any of this as any sort of cultural appropriation. When I was in my twenties, at a time when I was running for my life from a toxic subculture, I finally found a safe space and indulged in all of the Tarot, Taoism, Zen and magick reading I could get my hands on. Those ideas and philosophies helped me to grow into a much better person and made my life magnitudes better. Taoist principles like simplicity, honesty and authenticity are the foundation of my Tarot work to this day. The foundation of everything, really.

This week’s cards weave together around that core. The three cards together bring to mind the idea of suffering and satisfaction.

When you say it that way, it reminds me of the scene from Harry Potter where they are learning to read tea leaves and Ron reads Harry’s as something along the lines of “you are going to suffer, but you’ll be happy about it.”

The energy today brings to mind the opposite and begs the question:

Are you happy but suffering about it?

I follow a lot of artists on social media. Bruce Brackett is as fierce and fearless in his self-expression as you would expect a professional artist to be. The fan snaps, cups of love, and “negativity be gone” catchphrase is brilliant. I forget the main point of what he was saying the other day on TikTok. A side comment captured my attention so much I don’t remember the rest of it or even exactly when it posted.

It was about how he was able to take an accomplishment in stride, and wasn’t feeling overjoyed about it, “just” content. I’m paraphrasing heavily, but he said something along the lines of “I suppose I’m not supposed to be overjoyed at everything.”

No, no you’re not. None of us are as far as I can tell.

Where there is yin, there must be yang. Where there is light there must also be dark. Where there is overjoyed, there is also sorrow. Where there is lasting, there is also fleeting. Given the big picture and broad spectrum of all that life can be, content is a pretty darn good thing.

Buddhism talks about suffering. Set illness, aging, injury and physical suffering aside for a moment and let’s think about the mental and emotional side of things. No, not really set it aside – just make it the second domino in our cascading line of thought. Mind affects body and vice versa, so all of this can get around to the physical benefits of stress reduction and so on…but I’ll leave that to the holistic health folks to think about.

Suffering in the philosophical Buddhist sense can be thought of as dissatisfaction, or in other words a lack of that precious content feeling Mr. Beckett described. Suffering can be, and often is totally subjective and completely within our frame of mind.

It’s like that pastina recipe that has been popular lately. Being hungry is a physical suffering . Among those who are well fed, however, a bowl of humble pasta might leave one person comforted and content while a meal at the best restaurant in town might leave another person dissatisfied and secretly filling up later at the fast food joint down the street.

Things are good.

There is a pretty, floaty, quiet little snow happening outside my window right now. I have a private Tarot client this afternoon as tasty leftovers in the ‘fridge for lunch between now and then.

Right here, right now, in this precious moment life is good and I am content. I want to take this opportunity to tell the universe how deeply grateful I am. More of the same please. I wish contentment for us all.

For this week, the two of pentacles is the fading energy card. I don’t think that means things are becoming unbalanced. The two of pentacles hints at a dynamic kind of equilibrium. I think this means the need to pay active attention to our life balance may be fading a bit. It feels like things may be settling into a new normal.

Three years ago this week the world was tossed into the global pandemic. I’m not saying that’s over. That is outside of anything Tarot and way outside of my expertise. But wearing a mask on occasion and keeping up with new vaccine boosters is a new normal that is easy enough to live with. Things are striking a new balance that is solid enough to let us turn our emotions to other places.

Current energy is the nine of cups. The suit of cups symbolizes our emotions, which is why they are so closely tied to romance and relationship issues. This reflects the subjective nature of contentment. Nine symbolizes fulfillment, or a good outcome to something. When is enough ever enough? This hints at that feeling of contentment were just talking about.

Growing energy is back to the practical pentacles. The seven reminds us that you reap what you sow, so might as well sow good things.

That there will be a harvest at all is a magical, comforting thing.

All in all, these cards are reminding us of all the changes we’ve been through. It may have been a struggle to find balance, but we are at a place where we can find new balance points and find a new normal. This new balance (the energy, not the shoes) has brought new good things with it, but it is up to us to realize the good things about here and now. Dwelling on the changes robs us of a new sense of contentment. We may not be overjoyed at life, but neither do we have to despair. Like that old adage says, people are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

What are the good parts of our new normal that we can seed for the future and hopefully hang on to for a while?

Sage’s Short Sip blog posts and podcast episode are a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate each of you.

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Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

The Week Ahead: Churning a Corner

Churning the corner: a Tarot look at the week ahead

It’s Monday. Let’s talk motivation. Mostly because I don’t have any at the moment.

Hello and welcome to Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast. I’m glad you are here.

It’s week two of the new schedule where a three card pathway reading for the week ahead posts for everyone on Monday. I appreciate any day that you read or listen. Thank you.

The cards are chatty this week. The intuitive impressions are words as much as mental images. Typically I get more images than words. I don’t thing that shift is particularly significant, I’m fairly clairaudient anyway so let’s just roll with it.

The first card is the knight of cups with the words “emotional churning.” come through here. Knights are generally very active, confident, forward moving cards. In this case, it is in the “diminishing energies” position within the layout. Put those together, and it hints at a time of high emotions, but when that time happens for you as an individual is impossible to say. It may be happening, or it may be close at hand. Either way, I’d guess this time of emotional upheaval and wonkiness shouldn’t last long.

I’ll grant you I’ve had a morning of app and website technical gremlins, so I feel fairly annoyed with that, but those are resolved now and I still feel a sense of malcontent. I get a sense of short tempers, irritability, or of the world getting on every last nerve. Again I get that idea of emotional churning. It might be a residual feeling from the earlier inconveniences, but it it crossing that boundary line we’ve talked about before. If I focus on that boundary between my own mood and the general zeitgeist energy, this feels like more than a stupic app crashing would warrant. Yeah, I was annoyed, but now it feels like so are a lot of other people and over bigger things than that.

Mind that your mood is your own. This card reminds us of two things. First mind your emotional boundaries. What is the objective reality around you right now? Is the stress or emotion you might be feeling objectively warranted, or is it a by-product of worry about the future or dwelling on the past? If that is the case deliberately focusing on right here, right now can help. That’s the mindfulness that people are always talking about.

Let’s try it. Just for a quick moment. Then you can get right back to your regularly scheduled agitation.

First take a deep breath and think about what you feel and how you feel. Good, bad or indifferent, don’t judge it, just name it. How the heck do you feel right now? Is a just a little or is the volume turned up to 11?

Take another deep breath. Now pay attention to right here. Where are you? What is your environment? Pull your attention back from the words on the screen and notice other things like the device itself, the sounds around you, the temperature, how comfortably you are seated or standing.

All of those details.

Pay attention to right now. Forget the past, forget the future, just for a minute. Put all of your thoughts on

This.

One.

Moment.

Is this moment quiet? Does it suddenly feel like “HEY! It’s kinda happy in here!” If that’s the case, you might be resonating with outside energies. If you still feel gnarly and churning, then it’s time to face those emotions. Own them. Even if they are uncomfortable, it’s ok. They are legit. As best as you can, give them…and you…whatever T.L.C is needed. It’s not a personal failure to experience uncomfortable emotions. At worst it’s a signal there is something up that needs some attention, comprehension and problem-solving. At best it’s just you being human.

The good news is that as a diminishing energy, the emotional churn that is our Monday Motivation toward mindfulness (ooooh I do love me some alliteration) probably won’t last long. The high emotional state will churn the corner soon.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

The second thing is mind your own emotions. More than just being aware of the boundary, shore it up and don’t leak out. Feel what you feel. Embrace it, accept it, abide with it. Just please don’t spew it on other people. You never know what is brewing inside their emotional boundary bubble so be nice. We are are annoyed in this together – or so it seems.

The surrounding energy for this week is the Ace of Wands.

I hear “carry a torch for yourself.” which is a phrase that I’ve heard before with this card. Wands are associated with fire, our inner world, and our inner passions. Once we get on the other side of annoyance day, then carrying a torch for ourselves…self love, self improvement, self care….whatever name you want to use for it…give yourself a little of that.

If the emotional churn initially motivates, this self care is one thing that the emotions are pushing us toward.

“Spark an idea” comes through too. I also hear “lightbulb” and see that cartoon trope of a light bulb over someone’s head to show they have had a sudden good idea.

When you get the right idea, your instinct and emotion will light up too. When you know, you know, and when you know where you want to go it lights up the path to get there lights up too.

Churning emotions are a hint that something needs to change, that you need to turn a corner. A spark of an idea will let you know when the change is at hand and just what corner to turn.,

The growing energy is the two of pentacles. That’s where we are headed, and that’s a releaf. I ‘hear’ it will all wash out in the end.

I see pancakes.

Here is why.

Have you ever made pancakes from scratch? Most recipes tell you not to mix too much at the end, and that lumps are OK because they will cook out in the end, and mixing them out now will make the pancake chewy and tough.

That’s sort of the flow of energy here. It’s lumpy and weird at the start, but if we hang in and roll with it, it will all cook out in the end. We’ll churn the corner to a more balanced energy fairly soon.

Hang in there my friends.

Thank you for reading and listening. Please visit the main blog and podcast website. The link is in the episode description for podcast folks. Your support on ko-fi helps me to bring this weekly look ahead reading to everyone. Please click the white coffee mug on the website or the link in the description to learn more.

Many thanks. See you at the next sip!

When the Road is Wide

There is plenty of room for everyone.

The universe is a pretty wide road.

Have you ever seen an official balance beam for gymnastic competitions? They are 10 cm or around 4 inches wide. It’s hard enough to walk on one, much less do what olympic gymnasts do. Staying centered and balanced and in the middle of one of those is a darn good trick.

Now think of a flat path or sidewalk that is, lets say, about 1 meter or a little over 3 feet wide. Compared to a balance beam, how hard is it to find and walk down the middle of that?

Or walk down the middle of a football field?

The advice here is don’t make your path narrower than it has to be. Don’t make life narrower than it is. When life is wide, the middle way still encompasses a lot of territory.

The middle way of a wide path is big enough to encompass your comfort zone.

The middle way of a wide path is big enough for everyone.

Be kind to yourself and be kind to those who walk alongside of you. In a path as wide as the cosmos, there is plenty of room for all of us and every definition of middle, balanced and OK.

Look for slightly, not so slightly and completely unrelated content on Sage’s Other Words blog

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In Time

A few thoughts on the Two of Pentacles and the time-space continuum.

Lau Tzu, Ben Franklin and Dirk Gently walk into a bar…

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here. These short sip posts & episodes are Tarot contemplations in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

It sounds a little like some sort of bad “walks into a bar” joke, but the Tao Te Ching, Benjamin Franklin and Dirk Gently all factor into the collective energy today.

Before we get to today’s Two of Pentacles card, I want to thank Madam Adam on Tik Tok for reminding me of the word collective. “Collective energy” really is the perfect way to describe how these general audience reading for social media or a blog feel. It is a much better word for it than the “zeitgeist” or “general audience” energy that I was calling it. It simplifies and clarifies the message when we can refer to ‘the collective’ in the way that energy often refers to the client or sitter or seeker or quierant or whatever word you like to use there. So with thanks for the reminder. Collective is the new adjective.

OK. Back to the collective energy and our unlikely trio of loosely related ideas, all of which comes back to the Two of Pentacles, our penultimate balance card second only to Temperance in the major arcana.

I doubt Benjamin Franklin was influenced by the Tao Te Ching quote “Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished” when he wrote that “haste makes waste” but I like to think he would have enjoyed the Tao Te Ching, not to mention the Dirk Gently novels or my personal favorite, the 2016 Max Landis TV adaptation with Dirk’s whispery, excited “everything’s connected.”

Everything IS connected.

The haste and hurry that Franklin and Lau Tzu talk about both are inseparable from physical space and the passage of time. It is science and physics – velocity is distance divided by time. The stars we see in our sky are boggle-your-mind old because they are boggle-your-mind far away and it has taken that long for the light to get here. Time, space, human perception, human activity, haste and waste are all, you know, connected.

Now lets walk around to the other side and look at this from a psychological or spiritual point of view instead.

When do you get stressed? How does time or the perceived lack of it factor into those stressful feelings for you? It seems like excess demands and looming deadlines play an outsized role in perceived stress. We have too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it. How much is too much varies from one person to another, but too much for you is too much however much that much may be.

Sooner or later, something has to give. It’s better to change the circumstances than have the circumstances change your mental or physical health.

You know how when you are resizing an image in a photo editor you can grab a corner and it keeps the proportions the same? The length and the width are connected and if you change one, the other changes right along with it. That is the kind of connectivity that we are talking about here. And that connectivity can be used to improve stress and life balance just as much as it may have helped cause it.

Too much stuff to do? Change that and your perception of time slides right along with it to a more comfortable state of being. That idea of triage and prioritizing and cutting out the unnecessary is a Ten of Wands thing, but it applies here because that is the means and method of finding the balance that the Two of Pentacles is referencing. In this scenario, if we were doing a multiple card layout, the Ten of Wands may well appear as a way to support the Two of Pentacle’s message.

Time passes.

There isn’t anything we can do to stop that, but how we measure time is completely arbitrary and under our control. Deadlines? Move them. If there are bad consequences to doing that, then the deadline might be the better option. If you look at it from a consequence perspective, then your schedule may not shift, the amount of activity needed may not shift, but instead our perception shifts. The deadline and work level may be better than the alternatives. It may all still suck, but it sucks less when you deliberately choose it compared to something worse. Perception isn’t a physical shift, but it is a shift toward increasing balance and decreasing stress just the same.

*sips coffee*

Which is all well and good, but what about the Two of Pentacles here, now, today.

I guess what all of this is saying is that when you are feeling stressed or out of balance, change and adapt what you can, and the rest of it will flex in the direction of less stress because everything is connected, haste makes waste and Nature never hurries and yet all is accomplished.

Thank you so much for reading and listening. The blog and podcast are not monetized, so that your Tarot message is first priority, not an advertiser’s message. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop purchases, readings, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this unique Tarot content. There is a link in the episode description for podcast listeners.

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Adaptable Is Successful

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Some days flow beats fight.

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

Of all the meanings for the Two of Pentacles, adaptability and to a lesser degree multitasking are grabbing my attention.

That brings me back to the same image and analogy that always seems to come with the two of pentacles: dynamic equalibrium.

Pentacles brings the card into the practical real world realm of things. The two card of a suit almost always points to a balance of some sort. Most of the time a unicycle comes to mind. Most of us have seen a clown or performer on a unicycle at some point in our lives, at least on YouTube or TV. We get it how they make those constant small back and forth adjustments with the wheel to keep their balance. When we see it the process is understandable whether we could actually do it ourselves or not.

Today, my science geek intuition takes me back to high school chemistry and dynamic equilibrium across a semipermeable membrane, which isn’t nearly as entertaining of a mental image as a clown on a unicycle juggling bowling pins. But you’ll have that.

I think there is a reason for the nerdiness. It adds an, ahem, counterbalance, to the notion of dynamic equilibrium.

Rigidity isn’t as successful as adaptability.

The whole science thing is about two solutions on either side of a membrane that lets the -oh, let’s say salt molecules – cross the membrane. The water molecules are the same on either side of the membrane – oh, let’s say it is a bag. Imaging a plastic zip bag filled with way too concentrated salt water, sealed and plunked down in a big bowl of plain water. Imagine your goal is to season your water for cooking pasta. You don’t want just plain water, or your spaghetti will taste pasty and bland. Too much salt and you can’t even choke it down.

If the bag of salt water allows salt through, eventually molecular movement will let the salt adapt to the total amount of water and boom…good spaghetti. But if the bag isn’t adaptable enough to allow that salt through…no go with the pasta water. Same with our metaphoric clown. If he is too rigid and doesn’t move his unicycle wheel to adapt his balance then boom…clown down. Movement and adaptation is needed on both obvious and subtle levels to be successful.

Whether it comes from Charles Darwin, H.G. Wells or a Brad Pitt movie, “adapt or die” is the message here.

It isn’t the energy for every day or every situation. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stand your ground and protect those you love who stand behind you.

Other days, it pays to let water roll off the hill rather than plant your flag on it. Today’s energy asks for adaptability and gives us a list of quotes to back it up:

Adam Savage is quoted as saying “follow the process, not the plan” Do what you know works, even if that wasn’t the original plan.

Bruce Lee famously said “Be water, my friend” Today is a day for water that adopts the shape of its teapot. A drop of water falling from a cave ceiling changes it shape to match the contours of the cave floor, but over millennia it builds an immovable column of stalagmite rock.

A little adaptability now can show you the way to success later.

Thank you so much for reading and listening!

I’ll be going on another short summer hiatus in the middle of August so please stay tuned to the blog for more detail. Private email readings and everything is open and available, the same as always until then.

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Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Silence

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: add power to your words with the power of silence.

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

Today’s card is the two of disks from the Alleyman’s Tarot originally from the Serravale-Sesia Tarot.

This is a presumably public domain card from 1880s Italy. It is an interesting contrast to the better known Waite Smith Tarot and shows the difference in working with a deck that has only pips and a deck with complex narrative images on the numbered minor arcana cards.

Image cards and pip cards function the same way within a reading. Both are two paths to the exact same destination. They both take us to the message for everyone’s day, for our client or for ourselves. The emphasis shifts a little bit between the two types of cards, however.

With images, as we see in the RWS cards, there is a rich supply of detail to prompt your intuition. Despite the many prompts, all of them are thematically tied to the overall image and card meaning. Picture cards can lend themselves to a little more specificity, clarity and context.

On the other hand, pip cards give your intuition free reign. Pip cards are not bound by details or images, although they retain the same general conceptual meaning as an image card. This two of disks talks about balance much the same as the RWS two of pentacles .

Coins, pentacles or disks all refer to the same suit of the deck and you will see the terms used interchangeably. I tend to say coins because that was the name used in one of my first decks and it’s an old habit by this point. Coins are associated with the element of earth and ideas about work, career and money. From a more contemporary perspective it helps to think of coins as our relationship with the physical world. The suit has a very practical down-to-earth vibe generally speaking, so it all fits.

More than the number two cards of the other suits, the two of coins symbolizes balance. Usually it’s a very dynamic balance, like a unicycle rider who constantly makes small corrections and movements in order to balance upright. The taijitu, the yin yang symbol, is another example. The black and white parts of the circle are comma shaped instead of q straight line half to show motion and a dynamic interplay of opposites.

Today, the balance is more akin to the unicycle example. The message has a subtle, nuanced quality to it. It isn’t black and white. It is dynamic and speaks to the way we move through life.

In a way, it is just how human brains are wired and how our brains deal with the onslaught of sensory input from our environment. You get used to things, and they don’t get the attention commanded when something is new or changes. It’s like a busy caretaker tuning out a chattering preschooler a little bit. The message for all of us adults is the same. If you want to be heard, if you want your words to carry power and command attention, use them sparingly. As Mahatma Ghandi said “speak only when it improves upon the silence.”

Outside of a Medieval monastery, it is hard to go through life not saying anything. Communication is essential. In our wired, cyberspace connected world, we often forget the necessity of silence. When TMI takes we are immersed in too much information the tune-out-the-toddler reflex kicks in. We become numb to the input.

It’s a balance between communication, self expression, and losing your words to the noise. Nothing makes your words more powerful than the silent spaces in between.

Thank you so much for reading and listening.

The blog and podcast are not monetized and rely on audience support. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi and consider becoming a Patron of the Tarot Arts. The proceeds from ko-fi and private readings through the blog website all contribute to the creation of this free to access Tarot content.

See you at the next sip!

Busy isn’t bad

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.

When you look at a fine art sculpture the space it defines around it as sometimes as much a part of the composition as the space it occupies. Today’s card has a little of that energy. It’s not a caution energy, but it isn’t quite straightforward advice either. It feels a little like a power slide into a parallel parking space in a movie, or one of those internet memes where Wong portals in, gives some disturbing trivia and leaves out the same interdimensional portal.

Or maybe that’s just me because I’m a lazy, lazy girl.

If someone says “self care” to me, my first thought is coffee, readings a good book or taking a nap. The thing that the Two of Pents pointing toward is the fact that mental rest and re-balancing is not dependent on physical inactivity. Physical rest is easy. In modern America, we need a reminder to easy up on the mental stress.

You can do stuff without stressing over it. Arguable, you do more stuff and do it better when you are in a calm, relaxed state of mind.

This goes along with that Two of Coin’s quality of dynamic equilibrium. Maintaining balance often requires movement and adaptation. Spinning things are more stable, like a top or a bicycle or a gyroscope.

The sweet spot is a balance between activity and calm, being physically busy but not psychologically stressed about it.

Taoist philosophy describes it as wu wei. Chinese is notoriously difficult to translate. Sometimes wu wei is translated as inaction or not-doing. That isn’t to say that Taoists somehow think things will magically get done while we sit and to nothing. The translation “effortless action” seems more apt, especially in the context of this card. Both wu wei and the two of pentacles are pointing toward physical activity without mental stress.

A sense of accomplishment and productivity is a pretty nice feeling at the end of the day. Mental stress is not. A significant amount of stress is pressure we put on ourselves. It is almost as if we think easy things are somehow less valuable or less worthy of our precious little time. Again, the two card points us toward a sweet spot of balance. You don’t want to underestimate, neglect or minimize a situation, but you don’t want blow a molehill up to be Mount Everest either. That’s the balance the Two of Pentacles brings to us today.

Busy isn’t bad when it is balanced with inner calm. Mental rest and quiet is still self care, even when it happens in the center of a storm of external activity. Moving meditation is the perfect example, and a perfect way to practice mental calm in the middle of physical business. Walking meditation is very much a part of some Buddhist traditions. Of course, Tai Chi is the best known example of meditation in motion. Which circles back around to one of my very favorite Alan Watts quotes “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is to just peel the potatoes.”

It’s ok for things to be busy. It’s just as ok for busy things to feel easy while you do them.

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See you at the next sip!

Throw Down Roots

TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: deep roots and the 2 of pentacles

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. The blog, podcast and YouTube channel are not monetized or sponsored in any way, so I super appreciate any support you can give with likes, subs, shares, follows, reading orders, memberships or coffee mug donations.

Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.

Theoretically, any of the number two minor arcana cards can point to some aspect of balance. Out of the entire Tarot deck however, the two of pentacles seems to be the most focused on the idea of balance in and of itself.

It seems to me that balance is important to a healthy human psyche. When we get out of balance, when we get out over our skis as the saying goes, that’s when falling down happens. That’s stressful. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a terrible skier. It’s an apt analogy for dynamic equilibrium, just like the unicycle image that has come to mind so much lately. Whether you are riding a unicycle or sliding down a mountain, that kind of moving, changing balance requires constant adaptation and lots of little adjustments to stay upright and get to where you want to go.

Today the card brings to mind a different aspect of balance. This time, the energy is continuing in the theme for January that has emerged over the past several days. The Hermit, the four of cups, the five of cups – they’ve all been showing up in year ahead and month ahead readings and they all keep banging on the notion of laying low and “playing your cards close to the vest” for a time.

Which brings us to today’s version of the Two of Pentacles.

Throwing down roots is essential to balance too.

It’s not something that comes up much in the Tarot part of things, but I’ve studied Taijiquan (Tai Chi) since the early ’90s. Tarot, Taoism and Tai Chi all came into my life in my twenties and we all sort of grew up together. (She said gesturing to the TaoCraft name splashed all over everything.) At one point back in the day the hubster and I had a part time martial arts school where I taught Tai Chi and a little kung fu. Physical balance and strong footing are essential to Tai Chi practice. We call it rooting.

When strong winds come, a supple willow tree keeps its balance. It will bend instead of break. But even the most supple, bendable willow will still fall down if it has no roots.

That is exactly the kind of balance the Two of Pentacles is bringing to mind today. It’s like martial arts where you plant your feet, use your feet and leg position and drop your weight to stay solid when you need to.

It’s the same in life. There is dynamic equilibrium always, but there are moments within the big picture of that equilibrium that call for deep roots and solid strength.

The past two years have been weird. If the year-ahead Tarot readings I’ve been doing so far are to be believed, 2022 isn’t going to be all that different at the start. It’s going to take a while for the changes to kick in if we allow them to happen and if we can somehow throw down our roots and stay solid in the meantime.

I think the advice in the midst of continuing weirdness, is that it’s more than ok to self-soothe just a little while longer. In a circular sort of way this is our permission slip to throw down our roots, reach for the things that anchor us and nourish us like roots anchor and nourish tall trees. So what if you’ve watched that movie 50 times? Watch it 50 more if it helps. Hungry for comfort food? Why not? Eat your vegetables, wash your hands, wear those comfy pants and fuzzy socks. Being down to earth helps in lots of ways. Down to earth is a good place to grow roots and find some much needed balance.

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

Tipping Point

Thanks for watching, reading and listening today. TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee.

Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.

The Two of Pentacles is the quintessential balance card in the deck. In some ways it is even more balance oriented than Temperance in the major arcana. Temperance has a feel of balance by mixing. The Two of Pents is balance through the adjustment and tension between opposites. In this kind of balance, the balance point is also a tipping point.

In the yin-yang symbol of Taoism, the opposite colored dots in each side of the circle remind us that in anything lies the seed of it’s opposite. Anything take to extreme can become its opposite. Anything in perfect balance can tip into its opposite.

In Dune, Frank Herbert writes “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.” Both beginnings and balances are delicate things. Both are dynamic, changing things.

The yin-yang symbol is meant to be in motion. The trailing tail of the black and white parts hint at that motion, as apposed to showing perfect pie-slice halves. Balance is a thing in motion too. This card always brings to mind a unicycle rider who can stay upright in one place by making small forward and backward movements . In the big picture, they may not seem to be moving forward, but in order to stay upright, there is a lot of movement going on in the wheel, just in balanced opposite directions.

Pentacle cards are often read as being about work, career, money, practicality or some aspect of the physical world. They are also associated with the element of earth and by extension the idea of grounding and balance. Everybody talks about “finding balance.” But what do you do once you have it?

Balance is easier to maintain than to get in the first place, but once you have it, it takes a little attention to maintain it because life is in motion. Opposites are always at the doorstep. Which one would you invite in? Which one would you use to maintain a delicate balance when a balance point is also a tipping point.

Thank you for watching, listening and reading! Any likes, subs, shares, blog follows or reading orders you can spare are always appreciated!

See you at the next sip.