Tag: clairvoyant confessional podcast

Clairvoyant Confessional #9: Sipping the Right Stuff

This is why the podcast is going cyberpunk. Put so much time into doing a self-narrated podcast that I need to skip this week’s Sunday Tarot Turnover.

Instead, I give you….Confession #9, Sipping the Right Stuff.

Transcript:

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: my stuff ain’t right

Hi everyone. My name is Ronda. I read tarot, write stuff and make things.

The idea of “pushing the envelope” was made popular by Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and the movie by the same name back in the 80s. It’s still part of the American vernacular. We’ve all heard of pushing the envelope, although it has come to mean challenging ourselves and stepping outside of our individual comfort zone rather than putting lives on the line to test the physical limits of a new aircraft.

In the movie Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper talks about the pilots still “out there somewhere…pushing back the outside of that envelope and hauling it back in.”

Everybody loves to talk about pushing the envelope. Nobody ever seems to talk about hauling it back in.

That’s an important part too. As I understand it a SUCCESSFUL test program is one that ends with a live pilot, an intact airplane and usable data, not a hollywood style fireball.

Which in a way, begs the question of how you define success? Success isn’t always expansive. Sometimes quality really is more important than quantity.

Which brings me back to the stuff I’m putting into this podcast. I’m not so sure it has been the right stuff.

It’s been a stretch. Starting a podcast at all was way outside of my comfort envelope. A rambling pirate radio persona like the movie Pump Up The Volume was more fun in theory than in practice. It pushed the envelope to give Clairvoyant Confessional a try. But it is time to haul the envelope back in. I’m not pulling the plug on the podcast, but I am making a change in style and aesthetics.

One thing I’ve learned from this test flight is that podcasts are valuable and fun BUT it really is about the conversation and chemistry like we had on Menage a Tarot, which, btw, is still available on itunes if you’d like to give it a listen.

I still want to offer something to the podcasting environment for anyone who is interested in Tarot and Tarot readings. BUT I also learned that vocal performance is not my strong suit. So here is the deal: the pirates and test pilots are going cyberpunk.

Thanks to the brilliant text to speech conversion available through wordpress and anchor fm for better or worse I’m letting technology take over the narration.

Clairvoyant Confessional is now the TaoCraft Tarot podcast and serves as the audio edition of the TaoCraft Tarot blog.

By letting Siri’s second cousin Remy take over the speaking part, I can put my energy into the writing part so I can give all of you the best of me and my actual clairvoyance.

Thank you for listening to Clairvoyant Confessional and its new incarnation as TaoCraft Tarot podcast. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the short sip nano-episodes that give you Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee as well as the slightly longer episodes like the YouChoose Interactive readings.

As always, thank you for any likes, subs, shares, or follows that you can spare. As always, helpful links are in the episode description.

Also a special thank you to dinosoul for giving permission to use their song dimension as an outro for the past several confessional episodes.

Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you on the print side and see you at the next sip.

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: my stuff ain’t right

Scratch oniep

Hi everyone. My name is Ronda. I read tarot, write stuff and make things. 

The idea of “pushing the envelope” was made popular by Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and the movie by the same name back in the 80s. It’s still part of the American vernacular. We’ve all heard of pushing the envelope, although it has come to mean challenging ourselves and stepping outside of our individual comfort zone rather than putting lives on the line to test the physical limits of a new aircraft.

In the movie Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper talks about the pilots still “out there somewhere…pushing back the outside of that envelope and hauling it back in.” 

Everybody loves to talk about pushing the envelope. Nobody ever seems to talk about hauling it back in.

That’s an important part too. As I understand it a SUCCESSFUL test program is one that ends with a live pilot, an intact airplane and usable data, not a hollywood style fireball.

Which in a way, begs the question of how you define success? Success isn’t always expansive. Sometimes quality really is more important than quantity. 

Which brings me back to the stuff I’m putting into this podcast. I’m not so sure it has been the right stuff. 

It’s been a stretch. Starting a podcast at all was way outside of my comfort envelope. A rambling pirate radio persona like the movie Pump Up The Volume was more fun in theory than in practice. It pushed the envelope to give Clairvoyant Confessional a try. But it is time to haul the envelope back in. I’m not pulling the plug on the podcast, but I am making a change in style and aesthetics.

One thing I’ve learned from this test flight is that podcasts are valuable and fun BUT it really is about the conversation and chemistry like we had on Menage a Tarot, which, btw,  is still available on itunes if you’d like to give it a listen. 

I still want to offer something to the podcasting environment for anyone who is interested in Tarot and Tarot readings. BUT I also learned that vocal performance is not my strong suit. So here is the deal: the pirates and test pilots are going cyberpunk.

scratch

Thanks to the brilliant text to speech conversion available through wordpress and anchor fm for better or worse I’m letting technology take over the narration.

Clairvoyant Confessional is now the TaoCraft Tarot podcast and serves as the audio edition of the TaoCraft Tarot blog. 

By letting Siri’s second cousin Remy take over the speaking part, I can put my energy into the writing part so I can give all of you the best of me and my actual clairvoyance.

Short dimension

Thank you for listening to Clairvoyant Confessional and its new incarnation as TaoCraft Tarot podcast. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the short sip nano-episodes that give you Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee as well as the slightly longer episodes  like the YouChoose Interactive readings.

As always, thank you for any likes, subs, shares, or follows that you can spare. As always, helpful links are in the episode description.

Also a special thank you to dinosoul for giving permission to use their song dimension as an outro for the past several confessional episodes. 

Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you on the print side and see you at the next sip.

Thank you to everyone who supported the Clairvoyant Confessional incarnation of the podcast.

Your purchase of email Tarot readings combined with the “buy me a coffee” virtual tip mug, ko-fi memeberships to the “TaoCraft Tarot Table” and purchases from the ko-fi shop all support the creation of the free-for-everybody Tarot content.

Is there a problem?

Thank you for watching, reading, and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot.

Today’s card is the Ten of Swords. It is always one of the more dire looking cards in the Waite Smith or RWS derived decks. Being stabbed in the back with ten swords can’t be a good thing.

In fact, it would suck. Is there a problem here? Why yes, yes there is.

You can’t stop the sucking until you admit it exists. Panic doesn’t help. Denial doesn’t help. Seeing things as they are, even if they are a big problem, is the first step in solving the problem. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to be happy or chipper or brave about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is a movie reference or some sort of pop culture trope here, kind of like the Witcher’s deadpan f-bombs, or Eddie Murphy’s character in Trading Places asking if there is a problem, or something very Tony Stark about the energy here. Or maybe that meme where somebody’s famous last words were probably going to be “well (expletive) THAT didn’t work!”

My hunch is that if you feel drawn to this card and this reading today, that there may be a problem that you are resisting or denying. It isn’t predicting that something dire will happen, it’s asking you to consider that a problem already has.

“Tarot doesn’t tell you what will happen in life, it helps you figure out what to do when life happens.”

Here, the what to do that comes to mind is best described by dharma drum mountain global website

“Four Steps for Handling a Problem —A Proposition for Resolving the Difficulties of Life

Face it :  face the difficulty squarely
Accept it :  accept the reality of the difficulty
Deal with it :  deal with the difficulty with wisdom and compassion
Let it go :  afterwards, let go of it”

Is there a problem? When the answer is yes, it is ok to not be ok and it’s ok to be not ok for as long as you need to deal with the problem and heal.

Thank you for again for reading, watching and listening. I hope you’ll like, subscribe, follow and share. See you at our next sip of Tarot.

Short Sip Tarot: Wood & Water

Thank you for reading, watching and listening to Short Sip Tarot on the TaoCraft Tarot Blog, the TaoCraft Tarot youtube channel and shorts, and the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast. The Short Sip posts are a Tarot reading and thought for the day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee.

Today’s card is the Knight of Pentacles.

Knight cards are associated with action, and pentacles are associated with the element of earth.

Earth – as in grounded, rooted, solid energy.

Some days are like that. When you work with Tarot most days, you can see the ebb and flow of energy. Even if you do just quick daily one card meditations over time you see the larger patterns of energy. Patterns is a little bit of a misleading word in this context. It isn’t as if there is anything predictable or regular about it. It isn’t to say there is a set pattern like day and night or the progression of the seasons. It’s more like observation over years teaches you the kinds of clouds that roll in the with the weather for the day.

The Zen proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water” captures this particular energy very well. The idea idea isn’t necessarily attached to any one particular Tarot card, but it does come through Pentacle cards more often than the others. Both the suit of cards and the proverb are grounded and practical. Both remind us how important it is to balance mind, spirit AND body. Physical health supports mental and emotional health and mental while mind and spirit support the body as well. It is no better to be overly occupied with spirituality than it is to be wrapped up the the physical realm and ignore the spiritual altogether.

With the focus on balance, you would expect this energy and message to be attached to the TWO of pentacles. Often, it is. In this case there is a little extra message behind the mind – body – spirit balance idea.

Sometimes you have to DO something to achieve that balance.

Exercise. Eat well. Take a nap if you need it. Change the shelf paper. Do some mundane task that you’ve been putting off.

The spiritual is still there. There is magic in the mundane, but there is also a little mundane in the magic. To paraphrase the poet Duane Toops … a miracle is still a miracle even if it doesn’t feel like one.

A day is still a miracle even when it feels and needs to be ordinary.

Worth It

Thank you for watching, listening and reading. TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot is a reading to guide your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee…or whatever your beverage of choice may be. Any likes, subs, shares, follows, reading orders or membership subscriptions you can spare are always, always greatly appreciated!

Today’s card is the Seven of Wands.

The classic meaning has to do with success after struggle. You are going to get what you want to go – but you are going have to work for it, maybe a little harder and longer than you expected.

Back and forth, yin and yang, good stuff comes after hard stuff – even when the hard stuff is internal and about personal development rather than literal, physical realm struggles.

Matt Auryn, in his book Psychic Witch reminds us that “everything you touch touches you.” That connectivity and reciprocity is inherent to many if not all Tarot cards. It applies to the Seven of Wands even though it is tempting to see it as the surface meaning portrayed in the picture on the card. It is easy to see the Seven of Wands as an omen of a conflict or a struggle that is in progress, eminent, or looming on the horizon.

Underneath the struggle there is a thread of potential success that you may not sense in cards like the three of swords or the devil card. There is a hint that the struggle will be worth it on some level, even if it isn’t necessarily a victory by surface definitions.

I’m especially fond of Ellen Dugan’s added advice to meet challenges and overcome them with “style, wit and humor.” In his Heart of Stars Tarot, Thom Pham points to the character Obyron from Game of Thrones. Mr. Pham emphasizes Obyron’s persistence, and 100% dedication to the battle at hand. He’s all in and never gives up. But, just like Ms. Dugan, there is a nod to a great sense of style. Obyron is the essence of self confidence, beyond comfortable in his own skin and as much of a bon vivant, racountour and hedonist as he is a fierce warrior.

Both of these give us a hint about how to cope with our daily battles. If you touch daily struggles with your own unique style and personal sense of humor, it may touch you back with a little bit of hope. It might let you see the thread of victory and silver lining that helps you doggedly persist. Challenges that stretch beyond our comfort zone are often just the way of things. A little style and humor makes that way of struggle leading to success just a little more worth it.

Short Sip Tarot: Eyes on the big picture

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

Thank you SO much for listening, watching and reading! I appreciate your support and any likes, subs, shares, follows, comments, questions or reading orders that you can spare. The virtual coffee mug supports the blog and podcast. Contact information is below or in the podcast episode description. Have a question for the Clairvoyant? Speak right up and send it right in! Ask anything and everything (within reason) will be answered in upcoming podcast episodes, possibly with an on-air Tarot reading.

Today’s card is the World from the major arcana.

Back in the day, the world was all there was. Humans have been looking to the stars as long as we’ve had clear nights and eyeballs. Our perspective has changed a great deal since then.

Tarot was in use a hundred years before the telescope was invented. Don’t get your knickers in a bunch, I’m not equating the two. What I’m saying is that Tarot is still a product of the largely pre-scientific times in which it emerged. Tarot was psychology before psychology was invented. It was stress management and personal development and creative problem solving long before we had words for those things. The world was bigger then so the World card carries connotations that it wouldn’t had the deck evolved as an oracle in a more technologically advanced culture. Today, we might be better served calling the card “The Universe” or “The Cosmos” or something that implies a true gestalt.

We are often told to keep our eyes on the prize. That is good advice. Staying focused and avoiding distraction certainly helps us to progress. To focus like that, however, we have to narrow our field of vision. It is a mental reflection of how optics and our vision tend to work. It makes me wonder. What are we missing if we focus “eyes on the prize” too much? Focus is good, but narrow. It’s also a good idea to zoom out, look at the biggest big picture you can muster. It lets you see where the prize you are eyeing fits in the big picture. It lets you see your progress toward it. The big picture lets you see what other prizes are out there and if the original is the right treasure for you. It’s hard to adjust your direction with narrow-focus blinders on.

Eyes on the prize is important, but eyes on the big picture can be very helpful too.

Comfort

Today’s Card is the Hierophant. Some decks call it the Pope or the High Priest.

One of my favorite interpretations for this card is a grandfather figure, the keeper of family stories and tribal histories. The past couple of years have been crazy. Don’t feel bad if you seek comfort in a more traditional holiday season, old routines or some sort of spiritual ritual. It can be comforting.

The card brings the movie Cloud Atlas to mind. There are scenes of an old man telling stories around a campfire. On one hand it is an ancient image, but we find out through the course of the movie it is actually happening in the distant future.

There are threads of time together in language, story, tradition. They are kept alive through adding, adapting…the same as living species adapt and survive. There is deep comfort in old ways, even as they are adapted to our needs living here in the future.

Thank you so much for reading, watching and listening to these new TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot readings. These are (almost) daily short format Tarot readings to give guidance to your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Longer Clairvoyant Confessional episodes will be coming, but not in any regularly scheduled way, at least for the time being. If you have a question for the Clairvoyant, please send it to the contact in the podcast episode description or leave it in the comments. Don’t forget to like, follow, subscribe share and do all of those wonderful things that you do. All best wishes to everyone. See you in tomorrow’s TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot.

The One Measure

Thanks for listening, watching and reading! I appreciate you!

To get all of the TaoCraft Tarot content, please follow the blog. It can connect you to everything including the print-only Tarot content. Tarot Short Sips and YouChoose Interactive readings are on the TaoCraft Tarot YouTube channel. And of course, the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast has both sip and confessional episodes and can be found on anchor fm, spotify, stitcher, googlepodcasts and more.

Today’s card is Judgement from the major arcana.

The word judgement has to do with assessment and decision making as in “use your own judgement.” But like everything it has a dark side. Good judgement implies wisdom and experience. Poor judgement implies mistakes in reasoning and decision making.

Simple enough, right?

Judgement is my grand nemesis in the Tarot deck. To my mind, it is the essence of that inward looking personal growth and spirituality versus outward, social religion. In my experience, Tarot is all about the former and not the latter. The Judgement card is one of the cards most strongly allied with the Christian influence in the cultures where Tarot first gained popularity. Angelic and “Judgement Day” images are on this card in almost all decks that I’ve seen except for a handful that deliberately step away from the Marseille and Waite – Smith imagery. The Witches Tarot, Animal Wise Tarot, and the Osho Zen Tarot are my favorite examples of this deliberate separation.

In addition to pushing my personal psychological buttons and activating my religion allergy, the downside of all the judgement day/ angelic/consequences images is the way it can slip into judgmentalism rather than reason and judgment. Zealotry and blind idealism can slip in very easily here.

The up side to this line of thinking is the idea of second chances. The judgement card is also associated with a fresh start after paying your dues. It’s about cleaning up the mess you made and moving on.

On one hand you have judgement and reasoning. On the other hand you have judgement day and judgementalism. On the other other hand you have second chances and taking responsibility for your actions. How do you bring all of that into one card?

Compassion.

It is the one measure of it all. Good judgement is guided by compassion. Judgementalism is kept at bay by it. Compassion grants second chances.

Compassion is the ultimate judge and judgement. If it isn’t compassionate, it isn’t good judgement.

Thanks again for watching, reading and listening. See you on the print side!

A Sip of Tarot: On Schedule

Today’s card is The Hanged Man from the major arcana.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson famously said that “the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” By the same token, life is under no obligation to meet our time schedules. Sometimes things take a frustratingly long time to happen. Sometimes things go so slowly nothing seems to be happening at all. Other times life goes lightning fast and takes us by surprise.

Time is literally changeable at super high speeds. Even right here, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, our perception of time seems entirely fluid. Perception is part of the key energy around the card today.

I’ve often said that with the Hanged Man, one person’s stuck in the mud is another person’s day at a spa. As with so many things, a small shift in perspective can change your feeling and experience enormously. One pattern I’ve seen in readings over the years is that a narrow focus on the path ahead breeds frustration. If one aspect of life is taking too long to happen, or if you feel stuck and making no progress, maybe that is another area of life grabbing you by the elbow and trying to get you to pay attention to something else. If things are going slowly, maybe it is because life doesn’t want you to whizz right by the scenery on the side of the road. If you feel stuck, it might be an opportunity in disguise to rest, stop, really see and appreciate where you are right now before running ahead to something new.

Thank you all for reading and listening! I’ll see See you next time on the TaoCraft Tarot blog and the next Sip of Tarot episode of the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast.

A Sip of Tarot: Two minds, one heart

Today’s card is the Two of Swords

Swords symbolize the element of air. They can denote action. Historically they are sometimes associated with negative things because swords were at one time the primary weapon of war. It would be like trying to find spiritual guidance from a card with a machine gun on it.

Today, the energy is lying with the air, mentality and intellect side of the card. A classic meaning for the card is being of two minds about something. Logic and reason are – or at least should be – our first go-to for making major life decisions. Sometimes, however, intellect fails.

Emotion seldom makes the best decision. But neither does cold hard logic and intellect when it is used in isolation, with no emotion or compassion at all.

The figure on the card is blindfolded. That signals the indecision that is part of the card’s meaning, while it also hints that following emotion or intuition might seem like a blind leap of irrational faith to the outside observer. Only the person with their hands on the swords, the person who knows both their logical rationale.

The figure on the card is also seated in front of water, the classic symbol for emotions, wisdom and intuition that we so often see on cards from the suit of cups. That’s not surprising, because people are more than one thing. People are complex. Ideas and experiences have a great deal of overlap as do the card’s symbolism and meanings. Water – emotion and heart – has the person’s back so to speak.

When logic is blinded, heart and compassion supports. When you can’t see the answer, resting in a place of compassion is enough.

Your Attention Makes It Sacred

mindfulness consecrates

Today’s card is the Chariot from the major arcana portion of the Tarot deck.

I always think of this as the jet pilot card. That is probably influenced by all of the Richard Bach books I read in my 20s. Whether it is a chariot in a race like the old movie Ben Hur, driving the beltway at rush hour or flying a supersonic aircraft, you have to pay attention to what you are doing or end up in a crumpled heap somewhere. I’ve never done any of those things, but I imagine it is a heck of a lesson in mindfulness.

Besides helping you to survive at high rates of speed, paying attention does some other nifty stuff at the complete other end of the velocity spectrum.

Mindfulness consecrates.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein hints at this too. Toward the end of the book, I think it was Mary Jane who described the title character, Valentine Michael Smith “…when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe and the moment is eternal…”

When you pay full attention to where you are it makes that place special. When you pay full attention it makes that moment special. When you pay full attention to another person it makes magic for both of you.

Thank you so much for reading the blog and listening to the podcast. If you have any questions, please contact me at the email listed in the right hand column on the blog or in the episode description of the podcast. Don’t be shy! You might get a free Tarot reading in a podcast episode. Don’t worry. I keep any identifying information out of the conversation. Someone else might be in the same boat, and you’ll be helping them, too.

Just a reminder: if you follow Tao Craft Tarot blog you get everything, the whole enchilada, every bit of Tarot content I create including links to Clairvoyant Confessional podcast, notices when member only content goes live, card draw videos and the print only blog posts. See you on the print side!