harry potter – Sage Words Tarot

Cute and Clever

Page of Pentacles: Cleverness saves the day. TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee

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

Today’s card is the page of pentacles made by Eli Norvell for the Alleyman’s Tarot deck pictured above. If you are listening on the podcast, there is a link in the episode description if you want to take a peek at a super fun card. It has a sort of anime, kawaii, bubbly cuteness about it.

Today’s reading actually started yesterday, but it still feels relevant. As always, use your own feelings and discernment to decide if the card applies to you or not. That’s the difficult thing with these blog and podcast readings. It can’t be all things to everyone. If something is on your mind or giving you the feels and this reading doesn’t hit the mark, by all means please consider drawing a card for yourself or consulting with someone like me to get a more personalized reading. So if this helps – great! If not, don’t be discouraged. Keep looking. Your guidance is out there, somewhere, even if it takes some thinking and pondering and contemplating to get to it. That’s why the person getting a Tarot reading is sometimes call “the seeker” instead of “the sitter.”

Just after drawing this card yesterday morning, I got a call from my relatively new part time job at the local library. I love to write, so spending a few hours a week up to my eyeballs in books is a natural fit. It is a small place that our family has enjoyed and supported ever since we moved here years ago. Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity to spend time in one of my favorite places AND make up some income from closing in-person Tarot during covid. When there was an unexpected staffing need, I was so there.

The Page of Pentacles is about newness and opportunities. You could take it to mean that the card predicted that I would be spending the day with my new opportunity half an hour before the phone rang. I wouldn’t mind imagining that I’m that good of a movie grade psychic but that’s not how any of this works. That’s not the message of the moment – yesterday or today.

I may not be TV style psychic, but my intuition is, however, clairvoyant. That means it works with mental images. It is also clairaudient, meaning it works with mental sounds and words. And, as you who follow the blogcast know, it also works heavily with pop culture references – mostly references filtered through my Gen X lens.

To go along with the cute, bubbly, almost anime-like artwork on the card, I was reminded me of an 80s pop song.

This shows a little bit how intuition works through a daisy chain of associations sometimes. Critics say this is stretching, or reaching or fishing for answers in the vein of psychic “cold readings.” When you are reading in person for someone else, it can certainly seem that way. We can talk about cold readings another day, but for now let’s look at one card meditation readings for yourself. How is searching for connections within your own mind something wrong?

It isn’t

It is prompt. It is a structured way to think things through. It is a topic for contemplation. THAT’s what Tarot is all about after all. No matter if you are reading for yourself or getting a reading from a pro, Tarot is food for thought. Sometimes that thought process takes a few steps. Sometimes food for thought takes a few steps to digest.

Ok, back to this intuition daisy chain.

The early 80s Culture Club album “Kissing To Be Clever” came to mind as did the scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Hermione talks about “books and cleverness.” The word “clever” seemed to be the thing grabbing my attention through this card.

Learning, training, books and cleverness is a concept we see in any of the Page cards. Pentacles bring the page into the realm of groundedness and practicality. Put the two together and that says life hack to me.

This feels like an advice card, reminding us to work smarter, not harder. Look for the life hacks that really work. Let practical experience teach you and make things better next time around.

Yesterday, I posted an announcement that I wouldn’t be doing this episode right after the YouTube short and Instagram reel like usual. That post led me to another piece of life hack advice: have a plan B

Sometimes you have to drop back and punt. Sometimes you have to adapt. The universe provides, but it provides what you need not necessarily what you want or expect. Look for some life hacks, develop a plan B for when life throws the unexpected at you.

And if you can do it all while cute and clever – then bonus points to you!

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Thank you so much for listening. See you at the next sip!

Today’s Tarot: Learn by Doing

“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.

The Niggles: Time Lords 2020

Emperor Tarot, magic spells and Time Lords

public domain card image via sacred-text.com

The idea of time niggles at me when it gets close to a new year. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Doctor Who. Consider this if you will: Time is arbitrary and a portion of time is as much under our control as it is for the fictional Gallifreyans.

Actually, not time itself, but rather the way we name and talk about time is arbitrary. This present moment is the one time under our control.

Right now for me it is a Friday night in November 2020. Cool. Gregorian is good. According to the Julian calendar, it’s something like two weeks ago. 2020 a crazy year? No problem – just call it 5780 as it is on the Hebrew calendar. Let’s hear it for 2563 B.E.!

“Time has no meanings except the ones we give.”

I honestly don’t remember if that is something I read, saw on a poster somewhere, or if is from one of the poems I chucked out in the final edit of Triquitera – but it captures the niggly idea about the arbitrary side of time. Take Thanksgiving, for example. It’s less the day than it is the things we DO. No doubt holidays are deeply tied to the time of year in their aesthetic and energy. I suspect it comes from a time when we celebrated the natural seasons rather than cultural or religious things. Thanksgiving is, essentially, a harvest festival. Regardless of season, couldn’t any gathering with family to enjoy a special meal be Thanksgiving? If you can’t celebrate on the exact day you usually celebrate, would it be any less meaningful if you did the exact same things with the exact same people a week later? Or months later?

Have you caught where this is going yet? Yes, I’m looking at you bare faced germ bags that value your individual fleeting entertainment over human life. Cultural events and social stuff change all the time. It won’t kill you to stay home, wear a mask and celebrate differently this year – but catching a potentially lethal contagious illness just might. Or kill someone you love. Or kill someone that someone else loves. If you put your “freedom to celebrate the holidays” over life and love, then you are a slave to present moment, not a master of it.

With the slightest effort we can all be Time Lords.

We are the ones to place meaning on time…we are powerful enough to observe and celebrate whatever thing at whatever time we choose, either individually or collectively. Thanksgiving or Christmas or what-have-you can happen any day or time that we say it happens. That’s exactly how it all started. Thanksgiving happens on the fourth Thursday in November in the U.S because the 1941 congress said so. Or it is celebrated the second Monday in October because Canada said so. Christmas is the 25th of December NOT because of anyone’s actual birthday, but because Emperor Constantine ordered it – probably as a tactic in archaic culture wars.

Holidays and traditions derive their meaning from the intense personal emotions and connections we place on them. If we give holidays their power, then we have the power to assign when and how they happen. If by necessity, the time and manner of celebrating a holiday has to change for the sake of human life, so be it. We have the power to change it. We have the raw power to imbue any time, any place and any activity with all the love, all the emotion, and all the meaning of a holiday. We have the power to help each other through the normal, natural feelings and disappointments that come in times of change and uncertainty. And we have the power to change it all right back again when the crisis is over. We can dominate time through compassion and adaptation. We can take time itself in our stride if only we have just the tiniest bit of the compassionate, protective strength that the Emperor card teaches.

Or, if you prefer, the lesson the Grinch teaches. Even if a green furry dude take all the stuff, the holiday still happens. Even if one year out of your life is different, the holiday still happens because your intention makes it so. Holidays happen inside of you, not out in the world in the best of times. If you give the day meaning, if you suffuse any time with emotion, meaning and commemoration, then that holiday – that time – is yours.

Q&A: Spirit Animals

Q: I’ve been going to (reputable websites) to learn about spirit animals. Two of them have told me that my spirit animal is a hare. Don’t tell me the good things about rabbits, it’s just not me. I just know that this isn’t right. Now what?

A: This is one of those long kind of answers, so thank you for hanging in with this. Double thank you for letting me use your topic for the blog. I think it’s true that “the veil thins” near to Halloween. This is a good time of year to begin (respectfully and carefully) working with spirit guides and animal totems. I’m guessing there are quite a few people who feel the way you do.

But don’t worry, I’m not going to extol the virtues of rabbits to you, although it is tempting to do that. We like our backyard bun-buns.

Animal medicine (in the shamanistic sense) is an important topic to me for a variety of personal reasons. My first card deck of any kind was David Carson and Jamie Sams Medicine Cards not long after they were first published. Still, I’m not an expert by any means and this is all just anecdotal experience. First and foremost, keep looking to people who are experts. I’m not familiar with the websites you mentioned, so I can’t really comment one way or the other. I can, however, wholeheartedly recommend the Medicine Cards companion book and Ted Andrews’ book How to Meet and Work With Spirit Guides as an excellent place to start.

Although it was/is an important thing to me as an individual to learn about animal totems, I really don’t think it is a necessary step in spiritual development for everyone. Especially now that we are more aware of cultural appropriation and growing in respect for the culture of indigenous people. That is why I think Mr. Andrews’ How to Meet and Work with Spirit Guides book is an important foundation. He points out that spirit realm interactions are a universal to every culture, animal totems nearly so, but only one chapter is dedicated to animal guides. They are one piece of the puzzle and not necessarily for eeryone. It might be worth asking yourself if your mis-match with rabbit is reflective of a mis-match with animal medicine as a whole. Culturally, personally, ancestrally speaking, is working with animal totems the right path for you? Is this something you deep in your bones feel as a personal relationship, or is it a broader intellectual interest? Both are perfectly fine, by the way. It is OK to learn about animal totems without one choosing you. Or it may just might not be time yet for animal totem work. Maybe human-form guide work needs to come first. Although the totem came first for me, I get the feeling that this is by no means true for everyone.

That being said, I feel you. When I did the quiz on the Harry Potter website that tells you your Patronus, my gut reaction to the result was along the line of “oh HELL no” Then I remembered the old maxim that when we immediately or innately dislike someone or something it is because it/they are some aspect of our own personality. They are mirrors showing us something that we don’t like about ourselves. Reflexive dislike or rejection can be an important teacher. Maybe the animal kingdom’s very first lesson for you is to point out issues that you need to come to terms with about yourself before moving further along the animal guide path. Once we think of the off-putting totem in those terms, suddenly they aren’t so bad after all. If that is why rabbit hopped into your life through those websites, then once you make friends with your rabbity side, then the totem may well fade away and your long term totem might then appear. When I looked at my web quiz patronus that way, it went from “oh hell no” to “oh, OK.”

Rowling’s patronus idea provides another good analogy for spirit animals. Sometimes they change (Tonk’s changed from a hare to a wolf when she married Lupin.) Like human-form spirit guides, animal guides can come and go. Not all of them are lifetime assignments. Hare may be a temporary or harbinger sort of energy. Animal totems seem to echo other guides in that way. I’ve read in a variety of sources that we have a master-guide or lifelong guardian angel sort of entity, but others can come and go. Some guides, be they animal or human, come to us for a particular time or a particular lesson or a phase of growth, then depart when they are no longer needed. Your primary guide is already with you and always has been. When you become aware of them, you’ll recognize them for who they are.

Based on personal experience, encountering a primary animal totem won’t happen through a website or by pulling cards. They are already with you so there is no need to go out and “get” or “find” your totem that way. It is a matter of making a conscious introduction, of wanting to deliberately say hello to that person who has been standing beside you in the elevator. The visual meditations that Ted Andrews gives are excellent for making that connection.

It also brings to mind a scene from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina TV series. It was time for Sabrina the teenage witch to “get her familiar.” Rather than ordering one out of a catalog like everyone else, she decides to do a “summoning” ritual instead. That is exactly the subtle difference that I think is important here. Instead of going and getting, she trusted and attracted. Instead of yang, she was yin. She let her desire and need be known, then waiting trusting the her familiar to come to her. Now, substitute “spirit animal” for “familiar”

Rather than repeatedly going outward to websites, it might help to try sending out your desire to work with an animal guide but then turn quietly inward, wait and watch. This is where Ted Andrew’s other book Animal Speak comes in handy. After reading the foundations in the how-to spirit guide book, read Animal Speak. After you send out your intentions (by whatever means you choose) pay attention to animals that cross your path in ordinary, mundane, organic ways. Of course, the most powerful way for a totem to introduce themselves to you is in a dream. If not a dream, then pay attentions to the little ways that animals present themselves in your ordinary day-to-day routine. Is there a particular bird sitting on your car and giving you the side eye, or were you dive-bombed by a dragonfly on your yard, or does a particular animal suddenly seem everywhere in random advertising or are you given a gift with that animal on it….things like that. When those kinds of coincidences catch your attention, research THAT animal and see how it feels. What is that kind of animal encounter trying to teach you? If it is your primary totem, you’ll know. No one can tell you the right animal is not your guide, any more than anyone can convince you that hare is your guide. You’ll know with the same amount of certainty about the right guide that you feel now for the seemingly wrong one.

Speaking of hare/rabbit: Mr. Andrews suggests looking at relationships among animals for better understanding. Sometimes, because we live in cities and ‘burbs and not out alone in the wilderness, animals that are used to living near humans or even pets can be a messenger for a wild counterpart. For example, a house cat presenting as a totem might be your cue to research wild felines like bobcats or mountain lions, etc.

He also suggests understanding predator/prey relationships. Who does your totem eat, or what eats your totem? There are energies and lessons there, too. Before you give up on rabbit, look at wild western jackrabbits or its usual predators like coyotes or wolves.

Objectivity is important, too.

Animal totems are guides, not personal avatars. JK Rowlings’ patronus characters may embody the characteristics of the witch or wizard in the fictional world of Harry Potter, but in my experience it isn’t like that with actual animal totems. They teach you, not represent you. They feel more like companions or colleagues to me. They help you grow, not tell the world who you are. Think of it this way: Would you reject college professors because they were different from you? You resonate with your life-guide, just like you may have resonated with a favorite academic adviser…but you don’t have to resonate with transient totems any more than you had to be totally sympatico with your math teacher in order to graduate.

I’d be totally interested to know if any of this helps or if you try any of it. Comments are back open on the blog if you want to drop a note there. Maybe other people will leave questions about animal totems or spirit guides too. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find it or at least point you in the direction of someone who might know.

Thanks again for sharing your question!

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