Tag: holidays

Enjoy The Heck Out Of It

Enjoy the heck out of the holidays.

You heard me – enjoy

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot Blog and podcast.

Today’s episode is truly short, because I want to leave you with this one simple idea: indulgence can serve as a way of showing gratitude.

There is a tendency, at least in our puritan-influenced American culture to hold back the things we find most precious. From a place of fear, we lock life away in an attempt to revere and protect it.

I tend to think and feel that way. Probably far too often.

That is where the indulgences of the holiday season serve an interesting subtle purpose. Yes, by all means it is – and should be – a celebration and a stress relief. But it is also a means of expressing gratitude for life and all the little pleasures it provides.

For example, a cookie isn’t just a cookie at the holidays. It is a treat and a tradition. Eating that cookie and a half dozen others with joy and abandon is not only celebration, it our gratitude in action, our thankfulness for the flour and sugar in the cupboard and the bakers in our grocery stores. It is a child-like enthusiasm and unpretentious thank you.

Now substitute cookie for your favorite parts of whatever winter holiday you happen to celebrate.

And with that, I reach for another cookie and raise my gingerbread spice coffee to you in a wish for health, happiness and prosperity for us all in 2023!

I’ll talk to you in January, but Zombie Cat will be stopping by later this week with his so-called predictions for the New Year.

Merry Happy Everyone!

Thank you all so much for reading and listening in 2022 and always! I’m still pondering a name change. TaoCraft Tarot resonates with me because it is a reflection of my deep-down, life-long philosophies.

BUT

It is more important that this Tarot website resonates with YOU. Tarot readings, the really good ones, are a conversation and a collaboration between the reader and the sitter (seeker, querent, whatever term you like to use) I want to make this a warm, inviting cozy place for us both to contemplate Tarot and related topics together.

Conversations are made up of words. Words are the net we throw over ideas to draw them into our conversation.

In 2023, TaoCraft Tarot will (probably) become Sage Words Tarot to match my personal blog. It’s still me (under my pen name Sage) and we’ll use our words to talk about Tarot and do readings for you.

I hope everyone who has followed this Tarot work under Modern Oracle (1002 – 2018) will stick around through one more, hopefully more welcoming name change.

Happy New Year to all!

Path through October

Members-only three card pathway reading is up on the ko-fi blog.

Visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi to join and get the monthly Tarot reading along with other membership benefits:

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Fall/Winter Schedule ’22-23

Spooky Season ’22

The TAO in TaoCraft is about living in harmony with the flow of life

HOURS

There are none. The schedule going forward is there is no schedule.

Email Tarot is ALWAYS available. Order anytime you want, 24/7/365.

Delivery times will vary because I’m closed nights, weekends, US holidays and whenever my family needs me to be.

Seriously, I do mean vary – anywhere between a few hours to a few days depending on when you place the order. If you don’t get SOME sort of confirmation from me within 24 hours of placing your order, PLEASE send a follow up email and I’ll give you an update on the status of things: TaoCraftTarot@gmail.com

Live online readings (Zoom or Skype), local in-person readings and party appearances are all by appointment only.

Ebooks for instant download & distance Reiki sessions are always available in the ko-fi shop

LOCATIONS

There are none.

I don’t keep an office or physical location and pass those savings along to YOU (compare my $40 for a one hour in-person reading to the national average of $99 per hour)

Local in-person readings are in a mutually agreeable quiet, public place.

Local party appearances are at your event location.

Everything else happens online. Read about in-person vs online HERE

MEMBERSHIP / PATRON

“Tarot Table” members on ko-fi get a monthly 3 card pathway reading (through the ko-fi blog) monthly newsletter and automatic ko-fi shop discount. “Patron of the Tarot Arts” membership tier gets all this plus a private individual email 1 card reading on request, one per calendar month.

BLOG / PODCAST / SOCIAL MEDIA

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THANK YOU

Devil in the Delights

public domain

It’s not the most cheerful card.

Intellectually, I know better. Still, when I draw cards for the blog this time of year, it’s generally from a place of celebration. I love this time of year. October through December is the cinnamon flavored everything BEST.

The old trope about needing the dark to see the light blah blah balance, not our judgement to make, blah. The energy here is nowhere near that nuanced.

Shit happens and it sucks. Life doesn’t stop for the holidays. Reality can slap us in the face any time, but this year seems particularly adept at it *gestures to American politics* Yes, by all means don your matching pajamas, and raise an eggnog to your chosen holiday.

If you are not having such a good time, if you are broke, broken, or brokenhearted, know that we see you. We are with you. Tarot readers stare down the barrel of cards like the Devil, Death, the Ten of Swords, the Three of Swords and so on and so on – at all times of the year. Tarot gets in all of our faces sometimes and reminds us that life gives downs to go with the ups and, thankfully, vice versa. The calendar never dictates whether life is headed up, down, or in a level groove / rut.

You, your heart and mind dictate it.

It’s OK to be in pain when life hurts. It’s OK to be happy when it is all good. It’s OK when either one – or both – of those things happen at the holidays.

Comfy is good

Get comfy.

The comforts of home is something no in-person psychic or Tarot session can give. It’s like the whole Schrodinger thing. An observer just observing changes the whole thing. Sort of. Or something like that.

No matter how it is done, a live spoken reading can never have the mind to mind impact of reading your message at your leisure and in your greatest comfort. Calling this a READING is no accident of language. It’ a cosmic hint as I see it.

If you go to a psychic, then you have to put on your shoes and your public face. No matter how familiar, homey or welcoming their workspace may be, some degree of social conditioning kicks in – on both sides of the Tarot table. Even if the psychic comes to your home or party, the same idea applies. With a stranger in your home, you are in a different mind space than you would be under everyday circumstances. The message given by spirit is identical to any other format, but the way the message lands in your mind and heart might just be a teeny tiny bit different because of those social filters. It brings another person into the system, just like peeking in the box adds an observer into the system and interacts with the results of Schrodinger’s thought experiment. Or it least that is my meager understanding of it.

Social isn’t bad. Having another person affecting the system is in many ways the whole point of it. If you could figure this out on your own, you wouldn’t want a reading in the first place. Two eyes see with greater depth and clarity than one (related post: “Parallax“) In-person readings meet a basic human need for human interaction that written readings can’t quite replace. Phone readings fill that roll too. They are live, real-time, fill a social need while being covid safe. In-person work is valua ble, which is why I plan to bring them back on a part time basis for Halloween 2021, depending on how the vaccination distribution goes.

A Tarot reading that you actually read is something entirely different, and something very special.

With a distance Tarot session…be it email, video, or handwritten pen, ink and paper…there is no social filters, no schedule, no expectations. The words from spirit stream to you directly, in whatever cocoon of comfort and privacy that you choose to create. Wear your comfiest clothes. Listen to your favorite music. Grab your favorite bevorage or snack. When you engage with a distance reading in your own way, in your own place, in your own time, you engage with spirit from a place that is most fully and authentically youriself. You engage with energy and spirit on an more intense and mentally intimate level.

It’s that elfcon time of year. Even staying home, scaling down, and celebrating inside of your own four walls, why add to the season’s to-do list? Why tie yourself to a scheduled phone call when you can take in your reading in a time and a place and a way that suits your schedule best?

Intuition has a comfy bias. In my experience, the most powerful messages are given when we are both deep inside our comfort zones, with the cozy turned up to 11. On my end, coffee and fuzzy slipper socks will most likely be involved.

Spirit is everywhere. Energy is everywhere. Where we are relative to each other makes no diffrrence at all. The connection to that everywhere-energy and everywhere-spirit is strongest when we connect to it from our respective places of comfort and confidence.

Order a reading any time you like on the website home page. All of my layouts are available all the time now, at the lowest price possible. Please scroll down through the whole list here. It’s the widest variety of layouts and prices anywhere that I know of. I’m confident that you’ll find something you are comfortable with.

Wishing you all a cozy evening.

Time Lording Is Hard

It’s way easier said than done.

It is true that we are time lords in a sense, creating meaning and holidays at will. People created holidays in the first place, so we have the power to change them at will and then change them right back if we choose to do so.

Easy enough.

The hard part is the emotions, the pain of separation, the homesickness. Nurturing, closeness, being with those we love is a deep, primal need. It’s no wonder that language ties separation to physical illness; homesick, heartache. We can celebrate any darn holiday on any darn day in any darn way we want. It is, however, really hard to feel celebratory when the people are out of place.

Which is why people traveling and gathering at Thanksgiving last week in spite of the warnings and covid dangers is a tragedy in the making.

I understand what might drive people to do it. Heartache, homesickness, loneliness and separation are powerful motivators. I get it. I feel it when certain songs trigger certain associations with past events…we’ve all been there one way or another. We would do anything for one more holiday, one more moment with a loved one.

Why would you put something so precious so at risk when a small shift in perception and a shifting a man-made habit now could preserve the future? Time lords see bigger pictures and far beyond instant gratification.

I understand the need to be with loved ones and the pain of being separated from them at holidays, but at the same time I would undergo any exile in order to keep them safe and healthy. The only thing that takes precedence over the consuming desire to be with them is the desire to protect and care for them.

It’s hard, but you can celebrate your chosen holidays any damn time you want, twice if you take a notion. Celebrate all the way from Thanksgiving to Groundhog Day if you want to. You can bring celebration to any day you want. You can’t bring back the dead. The worst may still happen, but wouldn’t you want to know you did all that you could to prevent it?

The world card is a great comfort in these kinds of times. It shows us the bigger picture in terms of space in addition to time. It gives us that wider perspective we need in times like this. All of the cosmos is connected. As long as your loved ones are in the World, we are together for the holidays. Keep them them safe, keep them here. Stay here with us. Be safe. Be well. Take a look at the big picture, and take your place in that wider world. Time and space can’t take the togetherness from you when the whole wold is one place in a connected cosmos.

Your local weather

Instead of trying to stop the rain, open an umbrella

How is everyone doing?

I live in Allegheny County Pennsylvania, which has been in the news a little bit during the past couple of days if you follow the U.S. presidential election. I’m one of those by mail votes for each and every democrat you’ve been hearing about.

The actual weather has been very pleasant the past few days. Even for someone who likes rainy days as much as I do.

The energy environment has been a whole other story.

I like to think I usually have a pretty clear idea what is my internal emotional state and what is vibes from the external energy environment. I absolutely believe that kind of boundary awareness and boundary setting is important if you are going to work as a professional psychic of any type. Yesterday, the energy even kicked my black belt level boundary setting backside. Between my own fury at the thought of the fascist, racist, theocrats winning, and being in the bulls-eye of the racist, fascist, theocrats’ energetic fury that we might be the ‘democratic stronghold’ that would ‘steal the election’ from them. I’m not exaggerating when I called it a radioactive brew yesterday. It felt exactly that toxic. I can’t imagine how it must have felt to extra sensitive empaths.

Today is remarkably different. I’m biased, I’ll admit. After a lifetime, my patience has worn thin with that crowd. Maybe it is my biased optimism that the right side might win after all. It might be pride that my one little vote is one of hundreds of thousands making a difference. Maybe it is pride in my state and city. Maybe it is because I’m team Sheetz (Pennsylvanians know) Maybe it is the extra cup of coffee, but I actually feel like we are turning an energy corner.

This explains the coming storm images from the past couple of months. The virus is going to be bad this winter, and it is going to be a weird holiday season, but those are the outer bands of a passing hurricane if we get back to sanity and science.

So true to style (and profession) I pulled a card to see where the energy may be turning a corner TO.

card image from the public domain

The Nine of Cups is simple straightforward: calm the fuck down and enjoy the holidays. While I get it that is a message aimed right at me, if it feels right for you, it’s for you too. Nine of Cups is the Thanksgiving, family celebration, food and festivities THAT kind of tradition sort of card. So we can all take a deep breath, grab our jar of cinnamon and have at it.

So that’s the energy weather here at vote counting PA west. How are things with you? If you are outside of the U.S. (lucky you) how is the energy feel where you are? If you are inside the U.S. what is your sense of things? Feel free to comment about your ENERGY weather, not a political rant. If you post anything hateful or angry I will block you before you can say maga.

You may noticed that I staked out my turf, and defined my philosophical boundaries over there in the right column (and in the philosophy page of the “about” menu item.) That is nothing more or less than protecting the energy of this cyberspace. If those things offend you, I won’t be offended if you unfollow me. If you don’t mind (or hopefully agree with) these things, I hope we can work together. Tao is in the name because this place is about being true to nature and authenticity. That includes you too. It is important for you to be your authentic self. Everyone has the right and responsibility to protect their own energy boundaries from the general energy environment. At the same time it is not acceptable for anyone to force the shared general energy environment to change to fit their individual boundaries. Think of it as opening an umbrella, not trying to stop the rain.

12 Second Tarot: Six of Wands (27 Nov 29)

The only peace the holidays require you to keep is within yourself.

Whether you speak your truth or walk away, protect your compassion from the ravages of other people’s stress and zealotry.

12 Second Tarot: Nine of Cups

Happy Friday! If you are feeling the holidays, roll with it, and enjoy it to the hilt.

Even if you are tired of pumpkin spice and just not feeling the holidays, let it go, roll with it and let other people have their fun. You’ll feel better in the end if you don’t fight the flow of the season. Besides, any excuse for drinks and cookies is a good one, right?