3 of cups – Sage Words Tarot

Dare to Define Your Own Daring

Tarot isn’t tied to time, even in these little readings that look just at the week ahead.

That is the whole reason I don’t do classic “past-present-future” readings. Tarot is about energy, and energy is all about flux and flow. It doesn’t keep to a schedule. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has tells us … “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” By the same token, the universe is under no obligation to match our calendars and schedules.

Sometimes the best Tarot can do is to help us make our way through the unknowable chaos as best as we can.

As methodical as we may try to be about it, the way Tarot does that is by engaging our pure, raw, natural human intuition.

My method and structure for these readings is that the right side card represents energy that is fading at the moment and probably won’t have a large influence during the week. The middle card is the dominant energy, our primary food for thought or the suggested tactic for getting through the week. The left card is growing energy that may have progressively more influence as the week goes on. This is an idea or issue that is on the horizon and warrants our keeping a weather eye on it as the pirate movies say.

Sometimes intuition comes along and chucks that whole structure right out the window.

Today, the energy is less about the general flow of the week and more about individual processes. Instead of a growing energy that gradually replaces a fading one, this is more about three energies that are simultaneously present, but in different proportions. The mental image here is a sound mixing board, with all of those little slidey things that let you turn up some parts and down others. The CD player I had back in the 80s had something like that on it, and of course we all had the bass turned up to max…but that’s beside the point.

I think the real point is that we are all creating our own individual mixtape of energies this week and there is no real overarching collective zeitgeist for a change. That individuality in the middle of the collective is kind of the core message of the thing: Stand strong in your individuality. That will in turn allow you to better show up for your life and for the important people in it. When that happens, life will in turn show up for you when you need it.

Here the mental image shifts to one of those speckled quartz granite countertops, with all the pieces being part of the one smooth stone. We are individuals with individual integrity (knight of swords), yet we are all connected (three of cups)

Typically the Knight of Swords is about courage, daring, and pushing beyond your comfort zone. But what if your comfort zone IS the daring thing?

We live in – ah – interesting times.

For some, living in their true, authentic comfort zone can be a truly death defying act. For those of us who are not targets of hatred and bigotry (yet), for us to not be our fully authentic self is an act of cowardice by comparison.

In short, occupy your comfort zone. Fully. With gusto.

The internet says to show up for ourselves. When we have the courage to find our comfort zone and stake a claim to it, then we are better able to be there for other people in their quest to do the same. The Knight of Swords connects to the Three of cups.

When you show up for life in a way that is true to yourself and emotionally present for those you care about then life will show up for you. It can and will reciprocate in a deep and lasting way as symbolized by the Two of Cups.

Define your comfort zone Be fully in your comfort zone – with gusto. Then be in your comfort zone for and with others. Then life can meet you at the edges and make the comfort zone a little bigger.

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The Cyber Crew Counts Too

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today is the three of cups – the cyber crew counts too.

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

Today’s card is the the three of cups.

Early February always seems to carry a big cups energy. Ooof…that sounds like a underwear joke for 10 year olds waiting to happen, doesn’t it? Cups in Tarot are associated with close relationships, the element of water, and emotions.

Emotions are high this time of year. For folks who like the outdoors and warm weather, the emotions are often frustration with winter, with a dollop of cabin fever on top. For those of us who like cooler weather, we are intent on soaking up the hot chocolate and yarn driven coziness as long as possible. Many people are enjoying the mid-month hallmark holiday. I’m here for it just to get the on sale chocolate.

Like Valentine’s Day, the suit of cups shines a light on relationships often with a focus on the romantic ones. But also like the modern holiday, the suit of cups reflect other relationships too.

Palintine’s day is a great idea. I’m inspired by the youngling and the roommates and their DIY charcuterie board and movie marathon party last year. This is exactly the kind of camaraderie that the three of cups is talking about. It is a celebration of like minded friends.

The celebration of like minded friends is no longer limited to physical spaces. The past couple of years have, by necessity, has de-emphasized face to face socialization, but has to replaced that with long distance communication emphasizing a meeting of hearts and minds. Friendships can, indeed, exist in cyberspace.

Many of us already knew that. I count the people I’ve met with and talked with and continued to communicate with in cyberspace as much among my friends as those who live nearby in meat-space.

The energy is around the card today is very lighthearted, laid back and friendly. No major message or ponderous spiritual guidance. The energy reminds me of a simple delight, kind of like those small paper valentines cards kids exchange (or used to exchange) in primary school. Have a little fun. Tell your friends that you appreciate them – in meat space and cyberspace too.

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See you at the next sip!

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Do Differently

You choose: you pick the card, you decide how to apply it, and then get today’s reading the for your card.

This week the overall energy seems to focus on doing things, but for different reasons.

Ace cards have a thread of beginning energy (although not with the same wattage as the Fool card from the major arcana.) They also typically carry the essence of the suit, which is what draws my attention in this instance. Pentacles are connected with the physical realm, often career, work, or wealth. Today feels like the physical realm in general with the advice to engage with the physical realm to rest the mind. Think in terms of a long jog, or the classic hot shower where genius ideas are born.

Swords and knights are action. Swords are also connected with the element of air which in turn points to mind and intellect. If you chose the knight of swords (no spoilers! you’ll have to watch the video and pick a card to see if this one is yours) then the energy for you is also flowing toward doing and action, but something that combines doing and thinking, as you might with following a pattern or recipe or anything new really.

Cups cards connect to the element of water, intuition, emotion, and closest relationships. This is also doing oriented. but working with friends. Not so much working on a career or physical-realm task as the other cards, but actively polling your brain trust. It feels like the thing to DO is to poll the audience so to speak, to reach out to trusted friends. The idea of “two heads are better than one” will serve you well – especially if the other head is someone you have a good relationship with.

Today’s Tarot: Raise Your Chalice

This is one of those times where the card feels, to me, to be way out of synch with today’s energy. It just doesn’t capture the momentum of the moment. Something’s off.

Sometimes when this happens I’ll just re-draw the card and take the “off” feeling as my cue that some other message is more urgent or pressing than the first card can convey.

Other times I’ll just let it stand in the hope that it helps some unknown someone somewhere out there in cyberspace. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about the other day in the podcast:

BUT, as I go along, today’s card is turning out to be less about the card, less about a somebody-somewhere message and more about the Tarot reading process. This is a message for folks on my side of the reading table. Any card could potentially carry this energy thread, not just the three of cups.

The “I don’t know who needs to hear this but….” trope has always made me feel a little annoyed and agitated, but I never understood why until now. Not only is it overused and cliche, but strikes me as a little arrogant self-serving. It is as if the person writing it thinks they have some special, secret, better knowledge than everyone else. Maybe they do, but why not just say what’s on your mind without the “I don’t know who needs to hear this” part? It sounds like a power play over that unknown someone that you think you know better than. You were going to post the idea anyway. It serves no purpose to amp it up like you are some hero messenger from on high going out of your way to drop some wisdom on some poor wretch who doesn’t even know they need helped.

Of COURSE we don’t know who needs to hear it. We are pushing our ideas out into a public forum, not responding to a specific person. If we publish a reading about a particular person, then that flirts with violating their privacy (unless they give conscious consent for the reading to be used that way, which some people have…for which I am very grateful.)

OF COURSE we don’t know who “needs to hear this.” They never ASKED to hear it. That unknown someone out there might not WANT our almighty opinion. Who are we to say what anybody NEEDS to hear whether we know who they are or not? We are interpreters, neither judges of need nor arbiters of truth.

It’s a roundabout way to get there, but this mis-matched energy today is a good reminder of why I want to bring Reiki and medical ethics and professionalism to my Tarot work. In Reiki we don’t do energy work with someone without some level of consent. One of my Reiki teachers once told a story about a time where they saw breaking news on TV. Out of kindness and an impulse to help they sent energy to a person in the live news feed. The energy bounced back hard because it wasn’t requested or wanted. Since then, they use and teach the intent of sending energy unconditionally and without expectation, so the energy can be accepted OR rejected as the recipient sees fit – even in planned distance sessions. I’ve tried to adopt that same stance in Tarot blogging and social media. The Reiki in our teacher’s example was sent out of sincere compassion and a desire to help, not at all intended to be arrogant. The same is true of those “I don’t know who needs to hear this” posts online. But as the adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions – and tired social media tropes. There is such a thing as unintended consequences. We may not intend to be egoistic, but our work can still drift in that direction if we aren’t careful. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, maybe more than most.

Sometimes the lines between simple enthusiasm, a sincere desire to help, passionate evangelism and outright arrogance are very narrow. It is up to us to keep our ego in check. It is up to us to respect the universal life energy we read and the ones we read it for, both known and unknown.

That is exponentially true for those of us who have been raised in the American evangelical subculture. Our lives were so saturated with arrogant holier-than-thou pronouncements that it seems normal…but it’s not. Making holier-than-thou arrogant pronouncements is one of those things that a recovering fundamentalist has to be constantly on guard against. It really does have a certain kinship with the way that chemical dependency requires lifelong vigilance against triggers and relapses.

So no, I don’t know who needs to hear this unusual, convoluted energy message today. I won’t presume to think anyone does. I give it without expectation, for you to accept or reject as you see fit. Which is a very freeing, comforting thing on my side of the Tarot reading table. Being right all the time and the inerrant source of higher knowledge must be exhausting.

So let me raise a virtual chalice of thanks to all the many unknown someones out there. We mean well, but we also rely on your discretion and discernment. If we tell you something you needed to hear, great. We are happy to have helped. If not, then thank you for ignoring the BS and hanging in there with this until a useful message does come along. Here is to you, dear reader, for silently, energetically helping us online types to respect our audience.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot Nov. 29 – Dec 5

I hope you all had a good week. I don’t know about you, but I’m still on turkey overload and enjoying the start of elfcon season. I don’t know why but it seems easier this year. I’m probably massively forgetting something. But with what I am remembering, the YouTube channel will definitely only post once, maybe twice a week, but hopefully the blog will be a bit more active. That I can do in between batches of cookies.

Left: Queen of Swords. Swords are intellect, and queens are nurturing leaders. Think. Help but help smart. Triage and mind your resources. It reminds me of something I once read about UNICEF. They are a good way to help because they have infrastructure in place, and know what is truly USEABLE in an area. If the help doesn’t match the need, you are either throwing paper towels at a flood or donating a high end laptop to a village that doesn’t have electricity. Don’t let ego or impulse trip up your naturally generous nature or helping impulse. I read a Tweet recently that has a valid point: before you send a donation to a senate race in another state, donate food to you local food bank. Supporting good public policy is critical to do long term good, but a meal for a hungry child in your own town is a much more urgent need. In short, put your efforts and energies where they are truly most needed, not necessarily where your first impulse goes, no matter how well intentioned that impulse might be.

Center: Three of Cups. Here’s that Richard Bach quote I was telling you about in the video. “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” This is a good time to celebrate the non-genetic family that means the most to you. They are pure gold in times when families of blood can’t (or choose not to for their own good) be together.

Right: Ace of Cups. Inspiration. This card comes with the mental image of a coin being dropped in a cup. Inspiration comes, it can’t always be sought after. Sleep on it. Put a problem aside just for a minute if you can. The something-else that you do, the other -thing that you think about just might inspire the answer you were seeking in the first place. Creativity has to do with connecting disparate dots as much single minded focus.

Happy week everyone!

Today’s Tarot w/ Zombie Cat: A meeting of the minds

Braaaaiiiiiiinnss – they aren’t just for zombies anymore

It’s true that humans are social creatures. There is something primal about it that probably goes back to wolly mammoth BBQs. In modern times there is some other thread that ties us together other than pure group effort survival (altough some of that is needed nowadays too)

Wherever there is a meeting, there is a meeting of the minds. At a concert, it is the shared enjoyment of music. At a movie itvis the shared experience of images and stories. Pictures and stories don’t have to be called art and literature brain and emotion feeding kinds of things.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.” – Carl Sagan

Whether you are reading a book and communing with that unknown author, or chatting it up on facetime with grandma, it is still human interaction on a much needed mental and emotional level, if not the physical one.

During times when our physical beings are kept separate, it is all the more important to connect in a meeting of the minds.

Trust me on that one, because, you know, brains.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Change Will Change

Pause the video if you need a moment to choose your card for today, then restart the video to see the reveal. You know what I wrote on the blog about Pentacle cards repeating? Scratch that…nothing has changed about the pandemic. It’s an eneregy shift today, NOT a physical realm one. More on that in another post. Meanwhile, we have to stay in Samuel L. Jackson mode…. STILL wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and stay the f*ck at home. New York City is still in the thick of it, so the worst is yet to come for the rest of us. Be safe, and take good care of yourselves as best as you can.

Left: 3 of Cups. Even the introverts are starting to catch a little cabin fever…until we listen to the news or scroll social media. Forget mass media. Take a loooong break from your socials. The human spirit is thirsting for real, genuine one to one conversation. We can’t feed our need for physical interaction so it is all the more important to feed our need for genuine conversation and a meeting of the minds. Use technology for genuine conversation and connection, not mass broadcast. Leave that for the professional journalists. Write a letter. Make a phone call. Text. Zoom if that’s your thing. It is a two for one offer. The conversation just might lift the whole group’s spirits.

Middle: The Moon. The physical moon moves through cycles in its appearance to us on earth, so this card is often associated with the natural cycles of things. That daisy-chains to effect of the moon on the tides, connecting the card to water and intuition. The energies today are right to experiment with your own intuition. Listen with your heart, extend your feelings. What shifts in mood and energy do you sense? What is in your energy environment right now that needs your attention? Is it within you, hinting at a need for self-care or is it outside of you calling you to help others?

Right: The Wheel. Freud was right. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. Sometimes the message from a card is just as obvious, simple and straight forward as it seems. This will all change. Life changed from normal to pandemic mode and will change again in time. It will never go back to what once was because this will always have happened…this time and this experience will always exist. Time will move on, things will change. It will become our choice whether we let this time scar us, strengthen us, empower us or haunt us. Change is inevitable, but the choice is yours about how…and if…you embrace it.

12 Second Tarot (27 September 19)

Happy energy. Allow the good energy and happy relationships in your life help you, lift you up. Celebrate the connections in your life.

Your connection with yourself and the Cosmos exists even when it feels as if all else has failed. This universal connection can help you and be celebrated even when you feel most alone.

“You are as connected to the universe as a wave is connected to the ocean.” – Alan Watts (paraphrased)

12 Second Tarot: Three of Cups (9-1-19)

It’s a day for friendships and simple pleasures. Even if you are alone, know there is someone, somewhere who enjoys that nice little thing too. The happiness you take from that simple little treat is a shared experience. ☕