Four of Cups: You can speak from the heart, but you can’t force others to hear what you say.
Accepting people for who they truly are is an act of love, even when that includes a painful rejection, even when that requires that you let them go.
Other people’s happiness is not your responsibility. It’s up to you to give love. It’s not up to you whether or not it is accepted.
The only happiness you are responsible for is your own.
Available for instant download in the Sage Words Tarot ko-fi shop
Yeah, I know what I said. But it’s my blog and I’ll give a special offer if I want to. My Tarot Valentine is back for 2023
I know, I know…I said no cutesy pants promotions.
I was planning to make this a members-only offer, but it’s February, it’s cold out there, and love is for everyone.
So anyone can order –
Please visit the Tarot readings by email menu where you can get a personal one card Tarot reading focused on love and romance PLUS a copy of the My Tarot Valentine ebook.
*PRO TIP* scroll the whole readings menu! There’s something to fit any question, any budget. Prices start at $5. Zombie Cat will yes/no answer any question about anything – crazy cat.
Stay warm! That Nine of Wands part two we talked about yesterday will post over the weekend, so stay tuned! – Sage
March 10, 2023 – special offer has closed.
a free intuition building exercise to practice your one card meditation
urgh.
Just for the record, I’m very pro universal health care.
I’ve been all day insurance wrangling, sitting in waiting rooms and (after spending too many contentious adversarial years with a certain personality mis-matched primary care physician) feeling defensive, stressed and on-guard. Everyone today was so freaking nice – not at all what I expected. And all just for routine maintenance for my weirdo rare-ish genetic thing. I could be Storm. Or Blink. Or Cypher. Or Professor X. Or something. But nooooooo I get to be Clot Woman. Sheesh.
I just don’t have it in me for a reading today, much less the youtube & podcast thing, even with text to speech. I know I said I’m shifting the Turnovers to be a membership* feature, but how would y’all feel about a bonus flip flop? I’ll sip the coffee, and you read the card. Pick the meaning that best suits you. If you have any questions, the professors door (aka the comments) is open
If you want to learn how to do one card daily meditation readings for yourself, it’s covered in detail in my ebook PeaceTarot available for instant pdf download in the ko-fi shop. As a double extra bonus, all proceeds from the purchase of PeaceTarot from the ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, who are giving medical care under the truly worst conditions and aren’t sitting here b*tching about our meat-grinder juggernaut price-gouging money-grubbing American healthcare system.
Tarot Turnovers is a good way to practice. Unleash your intuition. Today’s random card is….
So what do you think?
*Tarot Table memberships include: three card members -only “pathway through the month” reading, newsletter, exclusive Tarot Turnovers not available in the free blog, members-only special offers and giveaways, and one private “Path through the year” Tarot reading by email when you join.
**NEW “Inner Circle” membership level – get your seat at the Tarot Table with all of those benefits PLUS a private one card Tarot reading by email whenever you want up to three per month. Join HERE
Proceeds from the sale of PeaceTarot ebook in the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders / MSF
All proceeds from the sale of PeaceTarot (first edition) in the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop in 2022 will be donated to Doctors Without Borders who provides medical services to all places in need including times of war.
Please click the cover or title to order
PeaceTarot is a downloadable .pdf ebook that teaches you DIY one card daily meditation Tarot readings. Includes peace themed card meanings for a full deck of RWS style Tarot cards. $5 or more (pay what you want) 25 pages formatted to 8.5 x 11 standard printer paper
Throwing a ball isn’t difficult to do.
Almost anyone can do it, one way or the other. Tossing something is a skill we all learn at such a young age, that we almost never give it a second thought. We can throw any little thing and have it land somewhere. If we are going to put the wadded up paper in the garbage can from 6 feet away, it takes a little more thought and focus but is the same basic body mechanics as any throw. Still, it isn’t major league baseball, either.
This is another way of saying one of the things I was rambling in circles about in “Growing Ogres.” Reading Tarot for yourself is easy to do. I can teach you in a 90 minute workshop, or in a short ebook. Doing a single card draw for yourself is the throwing equivalent of tossing your socks in the general direction of the clothes hamper.
Every card you add to a layout increases the level of difficulty. Not only are you dealing with the card’s assigned meaning combined with direct intuitive input, you add each card’s position meaning within the layout PLUS the way that the cards connect to each other to read the layout as a whole (not just a series of card + position meanings). With each added position, with each card increase in a layout’s the complexity increases. I don’t know if increasing exponentially is the right way to describe it, but it’s close. We are still talking about reading for yourself, so we are not talking about landing on Mars. Still, the food for thought from a multi-card layout can be a lot to digest. It’s moving up in difficulty from tossing socks to playing trashcan paperball, to little league, to a full on juggling act where the balls can fall down very easily.
Reading as an amateur at no charge IS an exponential increase in skill from the sock tossin’ DIY daily meditations. We are talking full-on March Madness, college playoff level ball handling. Not only do you have the multiple cards in multiple positions to knit together, you have the added layer of language that falls over the whole thing. It’s one thing to understand a card’s message and symbolism inside our own head for your own self, but it is a whole other enterprise to communicate those things to another person in a way that they can understand.
Reading professionally is playing hard ball with the big boys. When you do that, you are going to the show. Professional is professional whether you are throwing card or throwing balls. You not only have the basic card meaning, your intuitive impressions, they layout position meanings and the interconnection between the cards, when you go pro you have ethics and business practices to consider.
We all have perfectly good intuition. We are all “gifted” psychics. It is as much a matter of learning, practice and technique as throwing a baseball. We can all toss one. Not everyone wants to put in the work to get really good at it. Natural talent can play a part, but I’m not sure how much of a factor it really is. Not everyone has the drive, desire, natural ability, luck and opportunity to be a professional athlete. Or mechanic. Or doctor, or lawyer or therapist or grocery bagger or Tarot reader or professional anything-you-can-name.
If you can functionally do something, and you are happy with it, by all means do it for yourself. I think it is laudable. I like to make things. I could buy a sweater, but I have the ability to knit one for myself and I don’t mind the wait and less-than-professional result. But on the other hand, I like to listen to music. I probably could functionally learn to make amateur music for myself, but I don’t want to. I want to listen to music made by artists with talent and finesse as well as basic functional skill.
We all have intuition. It is, I believe, a natural function of the human psyche just like throwing a binkie on the floor is a natural function of being a human baby. Using Tarot cards to access that normal intuition is like learning to aim that binkie toss. Time, practice, technique, desire and sprinkle of luck and talent can give the intuitive function a good deal of finesse.
PeaceTarot is available as a downloadable ebook in the Taocraft Tarot Shop
I almost didn’t write #PeaceTarot.
It was an idea born out of tragedy, and there is a certain discomfort in writing a book inspired by stories of loss and violence. It feels a little like taking advantage of a disaster, even though the core idea is to help and comfort. Even so, every time I would chicken out, the Muses would take a deep breath, then start whacking me over the head with the idea all over again.
The notion of #PeaceTarot first came around after the September 2012 attack on the American Embassy in Bengazi, Libya. As bad as that was, it was even more discouraging to hear politicians and presidential candidates try to turn those events to suit their own self-serving ends. Their rhetoric was verbal violence heaped on top of violent tragedy. What could one unknown blogger do to speak for peace when some of the country’s most powerful people seemed intent on the opposite? I reached for the one thing literally at my fingertips: the Internet. I posted tarot meditations on Twitter with the hashtag #PeaceTarot and asked other tarot readers to do the same. Some friends picked up the challenge, but after a few days hashtag idea faded along with the headlines. It didn’t trend one bit, so I just chalked the whole thing up as a nice try.
After the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012, #PeaceTarot came to mind again. Several friends of mine were genuinely upset by the news. It was a loss that touched every parent in the nation. Maybe this time #PeaceTarot needed to be something more than a few ephemeral tweets. Maybe Tarot could be a source of comfort for anyone moved to emotion after a tragic event, no matter the circumstances. After all, that is what Tarot and psychic readings are really all about. Readings help us understand our situation, ease emotions, and find a way forward – plus maybe find a little inner peace along the way.
Day after day, violence continues; Shootings, bombings, chemical weapons being used and hostages being taken. #PeaceTarot demanded to be written, and for better or worse here it is.
If one person can find one moment of serenity in these few pages, then this book has served its purpose. That one person and that one moment contributes to the sum total of peacefulness that exists in the world. Peaceful thinking and calm emotions change the choices that we make. When we choose differently, then we can literally change our future. Thought by thought, moment by moment, we all can contribute to a more peaceful world for everyone.
From PeaceTarot copyright 2013 Ronda Snow all rights reserved. Used with permission.
The First Edition of PeaceTarot is available both on amazon.com for kindle and in the the TaoCraft Tarot Shop on Etsy.
In 2012 the mass shooting of children in a Newtown, Connecticut school shook the souls of the nation’s parents. For those of us who had young children it was an emotionally charged and terrifying event, even if we were geographically far removed from Newtown. It was followed over the next several years by the Boston Marathon bombing, the Mother Emanuel shooting, Orlando, Las Vegas, Stoneman Douglas High School and our hometown in 2018 with the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. The litany of violence and political inaction continues here in the United States. We can never forget that war and violence have been with the human race across the globe throughout history.
After many years of doing Tarot readings, I knew first hand the comfort the card’s ideas and symbolism could bring. I’ve seen a reading ease the tension in a person’s face and body language time and time and time again. The comfort I’d personally taken in the cards naturally found its way into “Tarotbytes,” my blog on the Modern Oracle Tarot website and again in this self published ebook.
Now here we are in 2020 experiencing a deadly global pandemic and the worst economic depression in nearly one hundred years. I had intended to use the great stay-at-home lockdown quarantine of 2020 to do other writing and other things. Catching up on some sleep was high on the list.
Yet, as is often the case, the cards have other ideas. Tarot has a role to play again.
It wasn’t clear at first, but the readings since late February (both for individual clients and generally for the blog and social media) have been overwhelmingly focused on the pandemic. You don’t have to be intuitively sensitive for the feelings of these times to hit you like a tidal wave. Then and now, 2012 and 2020, the point of Tarot work is to help us to honor our true feelings. The process of doing a reading can help clear stress and find a path forward that may have otherwise been hidden behind turbulent times and equally turbulent emotions. One thing is clear. It’s time to bring PeaceTarot out of mothballs and let Tarot work its magic on our current challenges.
All of the original PeaceTarot material still exists in the second edition with two new features. PeaceTarot still begins by teaching you to do one card daily meditation style readings for yourself. It still gives the peace-minded card meanings from the 2010 – 2012 era. For each card, I’ve added the pandemic focused interpretations that have stepped forward in the early months of 2020. Next, the internet allows me to give you a brand new resource for choosing a daily card when you don’t have a Tarot deck on hand. The TaoCraft Tarot YouTube channel has a growing number of videos that you can use to see a card being randomly drawn. You can then reference the reading for that card in the video description or coordinate it with the ones here in PeaceTarot as you build your daily Tarot meditation practice.
The one thing that never changes is that everything always changes.Despite those changes, peace of mind and a quiet Tarot moment are ideas that never go away. Through it all, I wish you health, happiness and many moments of peace.
Ronda Snow
Pittsburgh, 2020
I am head over heels for the new name and look.
I’ve had a good time with the one year anniversary. Halloween was the perfect day for the re-branding and re-launch last year. Thank you all so much. It means a lot that you stuck with me through the transition and I am grateful for all the new friends made along the way.
It just doesn’t feel quite complete without a matching bookend of a post about the TaoCraft name.
It is a sweet spot, philosophically, authentic and real. To my mind it feels like equal parts Alan Watts, Ted Andrews and Carl Sagan. It has been a joy to raise the tricolor freak flag of Taoism, Energy & Magick, and being openly secular. Hmm. That is an interesting mental exercise I’d not thought of until just now. If you were to make a flag to symbolize your true self, what would it look like? I’ll have to think about it. I’m thinking a white field with a taijitu, a pentacle and an atom. Hit me up on Instagram or Twitter – what would your own personal flag look like?
What is in a name after a year of living with it? Labels are still as meaningless or as empowering as we wish them to be. After this re-branding exercise, I think George R.R. Martin got it exactly right in Game of Thrones when Tyrion told Jon “Never forget what you are, the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.” I don’t regret taking a run at being all modern, trying to educate the world about the realities of predictions, putting energy into a professional, sanitized presentation. It was camouflage to protect my dragon baby. Now that she is grown and fierce and wonderful and breathing fire on her own, it was time to burn that whole house down.
Pippin Miller, of https://hyggelightwork.com/ did an oracle card reading for me summer 2018 when I was having a mid life empty nest only child goes to college crisis. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but a storm of broken glass shards crystallized into place. I don’t remember her exact words (sorry Pip) but the idea of it was crystal clear in my mind, and I could hear AJR’s “Burn the Whole House Down” earworming in my deep intuition. I’d been tinkering with the idea of “TaoCraft” as a concept and a name for years. Her reading was the starter’s gun at the beginning of a sprint. It was time.
So no more sanitized, blue, modern, suburban mom face.
Now it is all owls, black and gold, intuition, magick, wisdom, Reiki, meditation, and unabashedly secular.
The benefits for me have been many. The benefits for you are one simple thing: Better-than-ever Tarot readings. Authentic and honest, I can do better, more confident work for you from this comfortable place.
To that end, I’ve added a few things. Click here to see the map of my in-home individual reading and party service area. If you live outside of the area, no worries. I’ve found some quiet public places where we can meet. I’ve meet people there lots of times and never had a problem.
If your party is outside of the service area…don’t hesitate to contact me anyway. I take parties outside of the service area on a case by case basis depending on location and my schedule. I have added a travel fee for anything too outrageous.
Distance readings are still my specialty. A computer keyboard is a direct hotline bat signal right to my intuition, so you get as good of a reading as you would in person. Since I can work from my favorite chair, wearing fuzzy bunny slippers and sipping coffee, it might even be a little bit better. It helps when I can sit and think a minute without the silence that makes some people feel little awkward in a live reading.
Also there is a shiny new ebooklet that tells you all about a reading. A reading with me will only meet or exceed your expectations after reading it because you will know exactly what to expect. Click here for your free copy: TaoCraft Portfolio free download
I’m working on an expanded version with essays about Romance relationships, predicting the future and all sorts of other behind the scenes stuff. That will be coming to the Etsy shop soon, along with other titles hopefully.
One year, and we are just getting started.
Welcome to TaoCraft Tarot.
Remember that new cover art I showed you and the updated second edition of PeaceTarot I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? It’s alive! Now available for affordable, instant download from TaoCraftTarot.shop
#PeaceTarot was first published in 2013 as a reponse to the Newtown tragedy. The book teaches you to do daily #Tarot #meditations. The card meanings are all original material written with a calming, peaceful intent in mind. They are a product of my own daily meditation practice over the years prior to the 2013 edition. Sadly, tragedies continue and even came to touch touched our #hometown in October of 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagog in #Pittsburgh. If this small booklet inspires even a single moment of peacefullness for anyone anywhere, then it has served its purpose. It is my hope that, moment by moment, the thoughts and actions of peace we each bring into the world will be hung on the arc of history to slowly bend it toward justice after all.
I’ll be closed tomorrow so I can go bring the beautiful soul who made me a mother home from university.
Meanwhile, here are a few recent highlights
Sage Words Tarot 