Change is afoot. Everything ebbs and flows like the tides. The moon reminds us to use our intuition to sense those cycles and flow with them. You can’t fight the whole ocean alone. Flow with the energy, allow yourself to sense it, and you are not alone. The whole of the ocean and the whole of the cosmos is with you.
It’s not forever. Good times will come again and again like waves on the shore.
Welcome to Halloween weekend 2021. Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.
The two of coins is a positive, upbeat card. It is the pentultimate card of balance, second only to the Temperance card in the major arcana. Balance is a bid deal in the holistic health world. Our banner tagline is pretty much “mind, body and spirit in balance.”
Balance implies opposites. It really is like the classic balance scales we’ve all seen, like on the justice statues at court houses. If one side is given more weight than the other, the scales are thrown out of balance.
Around Halloween and Winter Solstice, this kind of balance reminds me of Lynn Andrews’ book Crystal Woman. In it, light and vision are used as another example of balance. In complete darkness, we can’t see anything. By the same token, if there is complete light, our eyes are dazzled and we still can’t see a thing. It is only in the interplay between light and dark that we are able to see anything.
Halloween is a valuable holiday. In reminding us of returning darkness, we are reminded how necessary that darkness is in the balance of things.
Yesterday we talked about Sitting Bulls quote “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.” It’s all well and good to feed the good dog but I think there is more to it than that. It pays to come to know, train and perhaps befriend the bad one. Just as shadow is integral to good vision, knowing our dark side is intergral to personal growht and a truly authentic life.
Long story short, we live in a world of light and dark, good and evil. Balance is the way. Starved dogs become desperate and more violent increasing the fights. Make choices and feed the inner good dog, but don’t ignore or try to starve the other into oblivion. Rather train it, perhaps befriend it. Compassion is the thing to feed both dogs.
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.
I dunno what the heck happened, but today’s “sip of tarot” post just isn’t loading into the podcast so we’ll just have to settle for blog , ko-fi, and YouTube Shorts for today’s card.
That being said, I want to run through some quick announcements – as much to get myself organized as much as anything
Barring mysterious technical gremlins, the (almost) daily one card meditation readings will be on multiple platforms so you can look, listen or both. Instead of “Today’s Tarot” these posts will all be titled “Sip of Tarot” to keep them distinct from “YouChoose” interactive posts and other blog-only content. Sips of Tarot can be found here on the blog page, on YouTube, Clairvoyant Confessional podcast (Spotify, Stitcher, googlepodcasts, anchor fm & more) and the Ko-fi blog
Speaking of ko-fi: The membership tier is OPEN. For $5 per month, members get a three card “pathway through the month” reading, member-only specials and giveaways, and a private, individual “year ahead” reading by email when you join.
The ko-fi virtual tip mug supports the podcast, the channel and this blog.
Speaking of this blog, you can follow it over there –>
Everything goes through here: links to podcasts, youtube videos, announcements of new member-only content, print-only blog posts exclusive to this site – all of it is right here.
TaoCraft Tarot social media is on Facebook, Tumbler, & Linkedin, but I only really interact with Instagram and Twitter. Drop by and say hi sometime!
I expect to pull all of that stuff together in a few weeks with a little something for Halloween, to celebrate the third anniversary of TaoCraft Tarot’s grand opening.
Apt title for the renaming fest that always seems to happen in October. I hope you’ll give Clairvoyant Confessional podcast “Confession #8” a listen to hear what this “sip of tarot” thing is about.
Today’s card is the Six of Cups.
It is most often associated with innocence, nostalgia, childhood, simplicity.
As you can guess, the simplicity thing resonates for me.
But today it is the childhood/child-like aspect that is most energy forward.
A long time ago, I read an interview with Luc Bessom, the director and writer for The Fifth Element, one of my favorite movies. When it was released in ’97 I was training and teaching both tai chi and kung fu, so the scene where Leeloo takes out a room full of Mangalores was high on my list of reasons to like the film. The interview with the director was talking about casting and why he chose Mila Jovovich to play Leeloo. He said she captured that sense of innocence, the feeling of seeing things for the very first time. At the same time, the character required that she have a sense of strength and competence and the essence of the “supreme being” that she was. Star Man and Dr. Vanderspeigle from Resident Alien are other fiction characters with this quality.
That is the head space that the six of cups is pointing toward today. A fresh, child LIKE look at a problem or a situation doesn’t have to abandon your hard earned competence and knowledge in the process. Brain bleach doesn’t exist. There are some things you can’t un-see, but you can always re-see for the first time.
Experienced eyes can be innocent eyes again.
Things change.
That seems to be a big theme lately. It can be overwhelming when too much changes at one time. Some changes are forced on us by time or circumstance. Other are chosen and it is for our own good to walk away.
No matter why we choose the bittersweet journey away from the old and toward the new, there are always memories of the good things to ease the transition.
No matter why we choose the change, or what the change may be, a mix of emotions and a degree of wistfulness is way of it. It is a moment in-between.
“No plan survives first contact with implementation” – unknown
“Follow the process, not the plan” – Adam Savage
“Actually sir, after all these years, I just, sort of, go with it.” – Harry Potter (Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling and yeah, her anti-trans stance has soured the books for me)
You can read books until the cows come home, but there is no substitute for actual experience, and that includes the experience of explaining something. While it may not be the high stakes intensity of “see one, do one, teach one” in medical training, the same concept applies to most things, including Tarot, intuition development.
Don’t get me wrong. Books are treasures. Reading is invaluable. Especially about things we can’t easily access in the real world. Books open vistas of space and time we otherwise could never experience. Reading, learning, growing are life long things, or at least they should be.
I love writing stuff. But a writer can’t fit what they write to everyone. Even when I write a custom Tarot reading with your own unique card layout, you are still involved. Writers encode information…we as readers are responsible for decoding and implementing the information. Which isn’t always as easy as it sounds. That’s where Adam Savage’s advice and Harry Potters adaptability comes into play. Things never go perfectly to plan, so we have to rely on the processes we know and just go with it. Good or bad, a result will happen. Good or bad, there is something to be learned from what we do as much as what we read.
Then comes Einstein
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein
Explain something. That will teach it to you as much as anything. Try to explain it – whatever your “it” is – simply. Writing leads to understanding as much as it demonstrates understanding. Maybe more. Such is the value of blogs and journals. You don’t have to be Hemingway to write. You don’t have to share it or effectively educate other people. Write, teach something. Even if it is just in your imagination, if you learn from what you teach, either through the process or the end product, then it is mission accomplished.
There is no teacher quite like experience. Any topic can benefit from a little learn by doing…especially if that doing includes a little simplification, synthesis, teaching and explaining to help you really wrap your head around the topic at hand.
If you are serious about living an enriched life and being a better person, then stepping outside of your comfort zone – even for a moment – is inevitable. That happens a lot in Tarot. The cards will nudge you toward a better path even if that means kicking you entirely out of your comfort zone in the process. This post might be one of those moments. It is for me. Today’s card uncomfortably pokes at some old issues, but imma just say what intuition gives anyway. This post is a little sweary and political. If you are not up for that, no worries, just skip it and come back for the next post. I’ll be back to my usual religion and politics avoidance policy by then.
Evangelical dogma and connotations around the word pride is reason nine thousand ninety-nine hundred and eleventy-one why I ran screaming from my family’s religion.
I was raised in the American evangelical subculture by the church deacon and Sunday school teacher who helped found the town’s first Southern Baptist affiliated church. (Yeah, THOSE Southern Baptists in the WaPo article) That kind of thinking turns the innocent word “pride” into something wrong and guilt-riddled. They turn pride into a sin (as do Catholics, so I’m told.)
If being happy with who I really am while proudly celebrating the authentic selves of the people I love is a sin, then hail Satan and pass the asbestos underwear! See you in hell, frens!
It’s a stretch, but I’m guessing the “pride” they are talking about is maybe a language artifact. Language shifts and evolves over time, even when fundamentalists don’t. Bronze age manuscripts filtered through medieval translations and bent to contemporary evangelical ends frames their version of “pride” as being unbridled ego. It makes sense that, in a world before psychology, a mental state like that would be attributed to a more common word like pride. If you define it in those terms “pride goes before a fall” isn’t wrong. Out of control narcissism leads to poor choices and risky behavior (like, for example, the former president who was supported by 80% of white evangelicals according to NPR)
Whatever the reason, it is still a shame that the newer, healthier connotations of the word pride is often haunted by these older, negative, derogatory undertones.
It’s June, so it’s not psychic or paranormal for my thoughts turn to Pride Month.
With the Four of Wands today, the words “quirk” and “celebrate” step forward. “Quirk” is the name for superpowers in the anime My Hero Academia that we’ve been watching lately. Superpower or not, socially acceptable or not, “quirk” here means anything that makes you unique and is a key part of your individual, authentic self. “Celebrate with pride” comes strongly to mind.
This is where it gets uncomfortable. I am reminded of reason number 1 why I ran screaming from the evangelicals: bigotry. Rampant, pervasive, intractable bigotry including overt homophobia. Not every single individual certainly, but the words that pour from those they collectively elevate to their pulpits speaks for everyone in a congregation. Loudly.
The ministers are literally in front of and above everyone else when they speak. Imagine the heartbreak as a teenager when they would nearly yell bigoted bullshit about “the homosexuals” when I had friends in the community who where some of the kindest most compassionate, open, inclusive loving people I’ve met to this day.
The Four of Wands is about community celebration. It is about lifting others up.
And it can be about embracing those who were rejected by their birth families because of who they authentically are. I love those “I’m your mom / dad now” memes supporting lgbtqia kids who are rejected by their own families. Anybody the evangelicals reject is prolly my kind kind of people.
The Four of Wands is about celebration. Authenticity is something to celebrate. People living their truest life is a profoundly happy thing. A lack of self esteem can make us more prone to bias or worse (a 2011 article on psychologialscience.org is one quick example) Confidence is fuel for compassion. Pride in ourselves breeds compassion for others which leads to pride in those around us which creates acceptance which seeds even more self esteem and so it goes. Pride not only isn’t a sin, it arguably makes the world a better place.
Pride month is a lesson for all of us. It is hard to hate others when you are comfortable with yourself. Those of us with privilege are exponentially more responsible to protect and celebrate and uplift Pride Month.
I used to think that my experience of leaving evangelical religion and coming out as a tarot reading, science loving, Taoist, atheist and witch gave me a teeny tiny partial keyhole glimpse into what it is like for the lgbtqia+ community on both sides of the closet door.
If there is anything at all I’ve learned from Pride month about being a good ally, it’s that being an ally doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with me. Pride month for an ally is about being proud of other people – proud of the people we care about.
If you are living an authentic and kind life – I am proud of you.
Celebrate who you authentically are. Celebrate everyone else’s authentic self too. But don’t let the celebratory pride slip into the self-centered pride. Pride and a safe and welcoming place is something for every month, not just big business June advertising. Although I kinda like all the rainbow tshirts. And the one big burger place donating a portion of their chicken sandwich profits (including Sunday sales) to a lgbtqia+ organization to troll the anti-equality uber christians that run that other chicken place. I’m all the way down with that particular cororporate move.
I celebrate with you because I’m proud of you and who you really are.
All are welcome here.
Related: The Niggles: What’s In A Name
gif images via giphy.com, nope via bitmoji free app, Tarot card image from the public domain. Rainbow photo by the author.
Normal hours are back! Email readings are available to order 24/7 and Live phone/online meeting readings are available by appointment.
Sometimes a line from a movie lodges in my brain and sort of lives there for a while until it proves to be real-life useful idea. I use them here in the blog all of the time: “Work the problem” from Apollo 13, Curly’s “one thing” from City Slickers, and now one from The Right Stuff.
I don’t even remember this one exactly. Writing a blog and professional Tarot was over a decade away and not at all on my radar when I first watched the movie and heard the line. I think it was Pancho, in the bar scene where Chuck Yeager had his cameo, but she said something about test pilots “pushing the edges of the envelope and hauling them back in again.”
Everybody seems to love the first part. We’ve all heard about “pushing the edge of the envelope” since the movie was released way back in 1983. Nobody seems to remember the “haul it back in” part. It’s just as important. If you have all intense bright light you can’t see any more than you can in pitch dark. Or as somebody said, “any landing you walk away from is a good one.” You can’t walk away from a landing if you don’t have one. As laudable as “pushing the envelope” may be, the things you learn at the edge serves no purpose if you don’t bring them home to use.
The 4 of pentacles has a reputation for meaning miserliness or greed. Or it can be a reminder to be careful with the budget. I’ve seen it interpreted as a protected, hoarded or very secret treasure that isn’t shared. Today is one of those days where the card is hinting at a bigger message, a half-bubble off of the strings of keywords attached to the card. This is one of those days where a purely intuitive connotation steps to the front. Pay attention to those whenever you do a reading. Energy and spirit really have something to say when that happens.
Be yin. Today is a day for hauling the edge of the envelope back in. It isn’t a day for pushing or striving or extravagance either literally with money or spiritually or emotionally.
It is a good day to rest and abide, and integrate, and learn how to live and use the things you’ve learned. It’s a little like the spiritual equivalent of putting away the groceries you’ve brought home. It’s time to put your spiritual learning into it’s real world place and start using them. There is a careful deliberate feel about it. Protect your spiritual treasures by solidifying them, living them. It’s a good day to turn off the afterburners and bring this Monday in for a landing.
“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.” – Chuck Yeager
Sage Words Tarot 