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Power of 3 (9 cards) Set of three yes/no questions for complex “this or that” questions but with the clarity of a simple yes/no answer. Question or topic required. If you describe what you need, I can adapt it to this unique yes/no format for you – $45 only available to ko-fi supporters
Extended TaoCraft (7 cards) The same layout used in live readings in-person and online. Shows the 3 card path you are on, advice, alternatives, helping energies and potential challenges – $40
TaoCraft Tarot (5 cards) Written by me and in use since 2003, this layout empowers you and your choices with the original five cards in the extended layout above – $30
Year Ahead (5 cards) Gives a theme for the four seasons coming up and a card to symbolize the entire year ahead. Great for New Year, birthdays and more – $25
TimeFlow (4 cards) the get-organized reading with “Let it rest, let go, que it up, and let it flow” cards – $20
Pathway (3 cards) A modernized version of the classic past-present-future layout with a focus on navigating your path, not predicting the future – $15
Zombie Cat’s Yes/No (3 cards) reads ANY questions with 100% guarantee to contain words, and at least a 50% chance of being dead wrong – $15
Short Sip Contemplation (1 card) – Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. General advice or a focused follow-up to a longer readings we’ve done together – $5
TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Want a personalized sip? They are available, in the no appointment needed email readings.
Sometimes apathy is an accomplishment.
Hi and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
This card again. Ugh.
I don’t know if this is true of all professional readers, but I have a couple of cards that are my arch nemesis. They poke a bony finger at old sensitive scars and rub salt in spots that still aren’t all they could be. For me, the hierophant is defininitely one of those nemesis cards, if not THE nemesis card. It isn’t clinically correct, but a common, understandable way to say it that this bad boy is triggering.
Or you could say it is a pain in the ass. Either one works for me.
Either one is Tarot at its best doing its best thing. Tarot really isn’t about blowing happy smoke up your aura or making you feel good. It is about holding a mirror up to what we are doing in life at the same time it is giving context to the nonsense. Sure, Tarot inspires and empowers, but that is only part of it. Sometimes part of the healing, helping, inspiring and empowering process is to challenge us.
A good friend will tell you when your zipper is down or there is spinach stuck in your teeth. Tarot is a good friend. Both best friends and Tarot decks are truth tellers and support systems all rolled into one.
It is standard issue boiler plate advice that when a Tarot card keeps turning up in a reading that it signifies a lesson that we haven’t learned, an aspect of life that keeps coming around until we finally deal with it in the right way.
I wonder if it isn’t part desensitization therapy too. I don’t know if this is legit, or if it is a disproven trope, but at one point people would manage specific phobias, flying for example, by gradually increasing small exposures to the thing that triggered their anxiety until they were inured enough to the trigger that it wasn’t a problem anymore. In other words, repeated exposure helped them let go of the fear inducing thing by repeating the thing until they were just sick and tired and totally over it.
That’s kind of how I feel about the Hierophant today. I wonder, what card or what issue in life are all of you completely over? The religious imagery and symbolism in the Pamela Smith artwork for the RWS deck isn’t trigger-y for everyone, but to my minds it begs the question: What is your personal IDGAF totally over it topic today?
Whatever it is, celebrate your accomplishment of attaining a state of apathy. Celebrate your apathy about that thing that used to send you up a wall and over an edge, whatever that is for you individually. If you can’t think of anything like that, then it may just not be the right time for you to take on your triggers. Or maybe you are one of the fortunate ones who don’t have a nemesis card or maybe you just don’t need this message today. Either way, it’s all good. Despite what the dogmatic religious folk might think, nature is unfolding as it should.
If it does apply, however, enjoy your apathy. You’ve earned it.
Thanks so much for reading and listening! Any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments you can spare is much appreciated. I’d also appreciate it if you’d take a look at the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page where the exclusive content memberships, shop purchases, private email Tarot readings, and virtual coffees all help me create these non-monetized, free to access (almost) daily Tarot readings for you.
Enjoy your weekend. Next sip comes Monday. See you then!
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip – Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Thank you for reading and listening. I appreciate it.
Today’s card is the 4 of pentacles. It is an interesting dichotomy of meanings. On one hand it has been associated with penny-pinching, or being selfish or miserly in a bad kind of way. Other times it has been associated with protectiveness, guarding a secret treasure, or found fortune. But before you run out and buy a lottery ticket, “found fortune” can mean a forgotten dollar bill in your jacket pocket from last winter.
When a card has two seemingly separate threads of meaning associated with it like this, often the energy of the day will pick one or the other. One aspect or key word about the card will light or step forward compared to the others. Today is a little different in that respect. This very much has a combination of both vibe.
Guarding what you have is a way to find a secret treasure. Ben Franklin made the idea famous in his “a penny saved is a penny earned” aphorism. A little delayed gratification now can open the door to unexpected satisfactions.
Another way of saying it is to ask if what you want is really what you want. That thing, that trip, that whatever-it-is, are you after that specific thing or some aspect of it that is already at hand?
It is an old idea from the Tao Te Ching, too. It tells us “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
This all isn’t to say you should make yourself miserable and be so stingy it makes Mr. Scrooge blush. Live. Live happy. Live with what you have. Put your energy into that and it turns into found fortune. Focus on what you don’t have, and you in essence lose it all. Moderation is, as always, key. A little shift in perception can change everything.
Today, the four of pentacles is reminding us that minding what we already have manufactures money, both in the sense of preserving those resources and in the sense of shifting mental perception in that Tao Te Ching way that makes the world already belong to you.
None of this is ad-monetized so your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi. All of the shop purchases, exclusive content memberships, no appointment private reading commissions, and virtual coffees all contribute toward the creation of this free blog and podcast for everyone. Thank you for your help. Likes, follows, shares, questions and comments are also very appreciated.
Thank you again for reading and listening. See you at the next sip!
You don’t just see with your heart. Look with your heart and you see with compassion.
There are many ways to see, including with your heart.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate it.
I still haven’t done the review I wanted to write for the blog, but I wanted to get my hands back on the Alleyman’s Tarot deck today. Today’s energy wanted to speak through this particular card it seems. It’s the ten of eyes, a card from the strange suit, some of the non-standard cards that are part of the Alleyman deck’s genius. It was originally drawn by Bobby Abate for the Outsider Tarot deck. My read today differs from the meaning given in the guidebook – but you’ll have that. Guide books are important. They provide context, intent, and inspiration. In the lore Seven Dane Asmund created around the deck, the Alleyman wrote his own guidebook with notes on this own organically mismatched deck. In essence, that is what intuitive style readers do all the time. We write each card meaning in the moment guided by energy and insight that changes day by day, sometimes hour by hour. To call a Tarot reading ephemeral folk art is an understatement, but it’s the best descriptor I know for the actual process.
But back to the Ten of Eyes.
Like almost all cards, this one has multiple threads of meaning, and it is up to pure intuition to see which thread best resonates with the current energy environment.
At first glance, this could be read like the ten of pentacles or ten of coins just superficially based on the round shapes. That could connect with the aspect of the Waite Smith Ten of Pentacles that has to do with our greatest treasures being the intangible ones that money can never buy. The ten eyes could conceivably see through physical wealth to those invaluable intangibles.
The image on this card doesn’t really reflect the super-happy good outcome vibe that goes with the classic Smith art and the ten of coins however.
The Alleyman’s guide interprets it as, essentially, doom scrolling.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a hot cup of “I told you so” flavored schadenfreude as much as the next person. Especially with the great American political dumpster fire of twenty aught fifteen to the present day. Everybody loves to see the bad guys get theirs, both in fiction and in politics. But it can be taken to extreme. The Ten of Eyes is a cautionary tale, to not let news get to you personally. USE the information, yes, but don’t let it change you or affect you. Don’t let information make you bleed out of the eyes as the movie and anime trope goes.
The message I’m getting today differs from both of these. The message has come through before, but I don’t remember when or which card.
Look with your heart.
The part of this card that most catches my attention is the sheer number of eyes.
So.
Many.
Eyes.
Intuition and mental clairvoyance is often represented by the so-called third eye. I think we have other eyes too. There are the physical ones, of course, for our literal sight. The third eye speaks to intuition and mental images. That is mind-sight. But what of emotional or spiritual sight?
Often intuition is conflated with spirituality, but intuition serves us all no matter what our spiritual framework may be. Raging egos and scam artists can still be psychic to some degree. Intuition is a normal human faculty that could arguably had evolutionary advantage. I like Neil Degrasse Tysons description of the sixth sense and exactly that. A functional, purposeful, useful function of human existence like, I believe it was his grandmother, who know just when to propare supper and how many places to set even without tangible, five-sense knowable input.
The heart governs both physical and mental sight with emotional and spiritual sight. Look with your heart and see both physical and mental inputs through a lens of compassion and kindness. That guides not so much what we see but what we do about what we see, what we know, what we learn, and all the information we take in about our world.
So go ahead. Doom scroll. Sip that schadenfreude. Unleash all of your glorious human curiosity on whatever is out there. Gaze upon the world but be aware of the filters you (and other people) place on what you see. Then filter that through the one lens that really counts – kindness.
I hope you are enjoying these (almost) daily Tarot contemplations that happen in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
It’s that renew-the-website time of year, so any support you can give through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi is greatly, appreciated. Shop purchases, exclusive content memberships, private reading commissions and virtual coffees all contribute toward making this blog and podcast possible.
No appointment is needed for private email readings, which are my specialty by the way.
Hello and welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Water is life.
Literally.
Today’s card is the Ace of Cups. Aces are said to hold the essence of their suit. In this case, it is closely tied to water, intuition, romantic relationships, or all close relationships, really. I can’t say there are uncountable metaphors for cups and water, but there are a lot of them.
Sometimes ace cards, being the first card of the suit, carry a little bit of new-beginning energy. It isn’t the full new start, the very beginning of the beginning that you would see with the Fool card from the major arcana, but aces can be symbolic of a new beginning or a fresh start within an established project or ongoing process or stage of life. That is the energy that is coming with the card today.
Every day is a fresh start. Heck, every moment can be a fresh start if you need it to be.
Have you ever had a big drink of water? I’m not talking about a tall glass of ice water that you sip with a meal, I’m talking about a big, deep, fill-your-belly big drink of water. Like a kid in the summer drinking from the garden hose drink of water. It’s a satisfying kind of experience. Try it sometime if you don’t remember the sensation. Nothing extreme, just … satisfying.
It’s harmless enough of a thing. We all can use with a little extra hydration sometimes.
Tarot cards are literally just pieces of paper. There isn’t hard science behind it, but besides the famous Bruce Lee interview, there is an esoteric connection between water and subtle energy. A big drink of room temperature spring or filtered water is essential for both clients and practitioners after a Reiki session. Kneipp water therapy evolved as an extant healing system in late nineteenth century Europe. In addition to similar spas and soaks, Japanese custom and traditional medicine uses water drinking on an empty stomach and timed eating to help digestion, with a variety of unproven health benefits.
Taking a deep drink has literal and symbolic benefit.
Today is a new day, a new opportunity. Quaff it. Drink deeply from this opportunity. What you drink of? What is it that you drink in deeply? Water? Wine? Your own happiness.
Today is an opportunity. Today is an opportunity to drink deeply of health and happiness.
Cheers!
Thank you so much for reading and listening. Any likes, follows, shares, questions or comments you can spare are always appreciated. Nothing here is monetized, so any support you can give through the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi is essential to bringing these free Tarot readings to everyone. Thank you for your attention and your support.
See you at the next sip!
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TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
A new plan is in motion and you can play a part.
Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
Today’s card is the three of wands from the Alleyman’s Tarot deck.
This card, along with a couple of others, suits August energy particularly well -at least here in the northern hemisphere. The seven of pentacles reminds us to be hands-off and let nature do its thing. The eight of wands is hints at hands that are tied. Things are in progress but out of your control and there is nothing you can do until the penny drops and the arrows land.
The three of wands has an outward appearance of waiting, like the other cards, but with a greater degree of mental alertness and engagement. This card signifies a time of expansion and growth, but with inner attention as much as outward motion. In that sense, it is a little bit like a Chariot light card. It’s akin to the major arcana’s chariot card but less intense. It’s watching your homemade caramel sauce like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t burn. It isn’t slam into the side of a mountain level stuff like the test-pilot chariot card, but it is about being alert and watchful. It’s like chef Anne Burrel says. You can go “from master to disaster” in a few seconds if you aren’t careful.
The three of wands lets us know that stuff is happening. It is a wide horizon, expansive energy. There is plenty of room here to flex your intellectual muscle and emotional maturity. This is a big open mental space where you can fuse logic and intuition into foresight.
Personally, I identify with the “stuff is happening” part of this. I’m streamlining my email readings so people can send their questions and order the reading in one seamless process when you use the commissions menu on the ko-fi page. I hope to have more ebooks coming online as the Fall and Winter progress. I’m working on some options that will hopefully allow me to inflation proof my private reading prices, although I still need your support for this blog and podcast through the shop, commissions, memberships and virtual coffees on the ko-fi page.
Please stay tuned for all of those announcements. BUT for today I have something else in mind. Today is August 1, mid season between summer solstice and the fall equinox, and that seems like an auspicious time, and the three of wands seems like an auspicious card to introduce card cuts into all of my readings.
Cutting the cards is a Tarot tradition. Sometimes it is just a part of shuffling the deck. I like the tradition of cutting the cards and letting the client choose which portion of the deck we use to draw the cards. I’ve done this forever for in-person readings. It really does bring your intuition and your energy into the reading in a more powerful way. Even though the connection isn’t affected by time or distance, when we are working individually at a distance through email readings or collectively at a distance through the blog and podcast, it still helps to forge some sort of connection. Of course the most potent connection is your decision to read the blog, listen to the podcast, or purchase a private reading. Making a connection with an individual reading is easy. In person or online we talk about your question or whatever it is that prompted you to get the reading in the first place. Individual email readings are just as easy. Whenever I see your name and question (or permission for an open reading) in print, that’s when the connection clicks into place.
I’ve been experimenting with making the connection to blog and podcast and you tube readings more personal. You might have seen those in the “You Choose Interactive” posts. It clicked, but not as well as I’d hoped even with embellishments like crystal or shapes or something else to help the choice besides “left, center, or right.”
If individual choice is awkward, let’s try a collaborative choice. You choose. We’ll try left, center anr right again but as a group.
Want to play along? Just put a comment somewhere with your choice of left, center or right. Drop it here on the blog, over on the you tube channel, or on any of the socials (I’ll put links in the podcast episode description). In upcoming videos and posts, I’ll cut the deck into three piles. Tell me whether you want me to draw the short sip card from the left, center or right. I’ll watch the comments, and whenever there is a clear majority, that’s the cut I’ll use for the next week or so in the short sip readings. I’ll put the call out for a new cut, and you can comment your choice again. And so it goes. Even if you choice isn’t in the majority, the whole process is energized by your effort and intentions, making it better for everyone. I wonder what Carl Jung and his collective unconscious theory would say about this exercise? Put a little energy in, get a more energized reading back. Fair enough, right?
Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to take your time, browse the blog, and please leave a comment with your choice of deck stack for the next few readings. Heck, comment about anything in the blog / cast. Or go all out and ask a question! I won’t promise it will all make it into the blog, but all questions are welcome. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I’ll see you at the next sip!
Members only newsletter and learn to read Tarot “turnover” exercise is up for this week: HERE
I put the planned schedule for Fall on my personal blog, Sage & Stuff. Now we just need to see how long this one holds up before this squirrel rave that we call life blows everything up.
The content on the other blog is going to be different from this one moving forward, so you are all more than welcome to follow both. In fact, I kind of hope you will.
Memberships are available on ko-fi if you would like to access the Tarot Turnover intuition builder exercises. There are two levels of membership available:
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pathway 3 card Tarot reading every month on the members only ko-fi blog
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Here is the Big announcement:
TaoCraft Tarot shop is now exclusively on ko-fi.
This will help me keep prices the same for the rest of this year, at least.
My readings are some of the most affordable going, anyway. I charge a flat rate per total reading, not per minute. Compare my roughly hour long 7 card readings at $40 to the $50 to $75 to $90 some other psychics charge for as little as 30 minutes. Granted, I’ll be holding the line on time a little more strictly than I have in the past, but this would be an out and out bargain at half of the time for a reading from someone with 30 years of Tarot reading experience.
There are a few new pages here. I’ll let you browse the new Reiki and How To Find a Trustworthy Psychic (excerpt from the upcoming TaoCraft: Portfolio) pages at your leisure.
Have a great week…see you Monday – Friday for Short Sip Tarot posts & podcasts!
If everything changes in time, doesn’t that mean time is magic?
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. Short Sip episodes are Tarot contemplations for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.
Today’s card is the Magician. It’s nice to see some major arcana cards showing up lately. That in itself is a nice little validation for me, that some of the energy and effort that I’ve been investing into refreshing the website and migrating the shop to a different platform in an effort to keep prices down on readings just might pay off.
It’s also an interesting compliment to the summer energy that’s out there. As a whole, the major arcana has so called “higher energy” That’s kind of a confusing way to say it. Sometimes higher vs lower energy is used qualitatively. Higher connotes something more esoteric, more spiritual, somehow “good” or virtuous while lower is sometimes used to connote something more banal and mundane, perhaps lesser quality or even malicious.
When I think of major arcana cards as having higher energy, it is a quantitative thing. Electromagnetic waves that have more cycles per unit of distance are said to have higher frequencies. There are just plain more waves in the wavelength not that they are any better or worse – unless of course you are talking about radiation and living tissue but that’s another story that we’ll ignore for now, since we are talking about Tarot card symbolism, not hard science & physics.
What I’m trying to say is that major arcana cards aren’t any better or any worse than the minor arcana. There is a surprising amount of overlap between some minor arcana cards and the majors. The minor cards have a gentler touch with the advice. They hand you a cookie and tell you that by the time you are done it will all be right as rain. Major arcana cards are more ka-pow. They are Oda Mae looking you straight in the eye and telling you that you in danger, girl.
I’ve been told by my Lenormand Tarot reading friends that the whole Lenormand deck is a little like that, all no holds barred frying pan to the face type stuff. It’s on my list of stuff to check out, but I have some other oracle exploration to get out of my system first. I’ll tell you more about that when it’s closer to ready for cyberspace.
Meanwhile, back at the Magician, this is fairly blunt. It reminds me of those internet memes from around the time when the movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” was released where Wong would portal in, throw down some random weird statement and portal back out again. Today’s card is a little like that. There aren’t any circles here. No sneaking up and nabbing the point from behind like with the Turn Around or Tools of the Inner Trade post / episodes.
source: @imgur
The Magician card symbolizes transformation as much as it does manifestation. The only difference between life and magic is our preconceived expectations. The flow of time and life change and transform everything. If you are still alive, you are still magic.
Thank you for reading and listening! Any likes, subs, follows, shares, questions or comments that you can spare are always appreciated. Comments are open on the blog, which podcast listeners can reach through the link in the show description.
Just a reminder that the blog, podcast and socials will be on a short summer hiatus July first to July sixth. Email readings are open on the blog website throughout that time. So is the ko-fi page where memberships, the shop, commissions and virtual coffees all support the creation of this free to access Tarot content. The blog and podcast are not monetized. That let’s me serve up a sip of spirit message without the taste of corporate messaging.
Sage Words Tarot 