ronda snow – Sage Words Tarot

PeaceTarot: Introduction to the Second Edition

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

You Choose: Free Interactive Tarot Reading

Left: Page of Coins. A day for learning practical skills. You don’t have to be perfect right away. It’s more about usefulness and progress than prettiness and perfection.

Middle: Knight of Cups. Emotions are more real, complete, and satisfying when they are constructivly expressed. Don’t just tantrum or gush – make something good come of whatever feeling motivates you today.

Right: Knight of Pentacles. It doesn’t matter if your journey takes you a thousand miles or across the room. Unless you take that first step, you go nowhere.

12 Second Tarot: The Wheel

Every change requires a choice, and every choice results in change.

Change and choice are two sides of the same coin in both subtle and obvious ways. If we choose something radically different from what we have been doing, the change is obvious. Once again I’m reminded of what Chris Chibnall wrote for Doctor Who

“The future pivots around you, here, now. So do good.”

But what about the future when no choice is made, nothing is done. What is the change there? No choice, no change, right? Not entirely.

A physician I used to work with often said that the decision not to decide is still a decision. In that case, the change comes in mindset rather than external circumstances. If you decide to decide later it relieves stress in the present moment, which in turn can help us see clearer, get more information, and you guessed it…make a better decision later on. Not deciding makes for less stress and better judgement….both of which are a change from the initial mental state.

Deliberately deciding to stay the course, and persist is a choice. Only time will tell if it was a wise one or not. Deliberately deciding to NOT change externally still has internal impacts. One possibility is that choosing to stay on a path changes your level of confidence and courage and persistence for the better.

Even in the most passive, oblivious scenario possible, where no choice is made, time changes. Don’t choose, and by default things will still change around you, like or not.
Load the change side of the wheel with enough time and external change, it will eventually force a choice. At some point or another, we all wind up choosing if we are happy with our circumstances or not. Once that question is answered, we must choose if we are going to do anything about it or not. If we choose stagnation, we change relative to the world around us that is not stagnant.

Like two sides of a moving wheel, choice and change are very much connected. If you want a change, it requires a choice. Make a choice, even if that choice is to do nothing, some sort of change will still come in time.

Vision 2020: Tarot of the Heart

Since we just wrapped up the Valentine season and the “My Tarot Valentine 2020 series” it only makes sense to start the Vision 2020 series with romance and relationship readings.

From my side of the table, relationship and romance readings are some of the trickiest to do. The intuitive part isn’t difficult. The energy is as easy as easy to interpret as any other topic, but delivering the intuitive message requires an extra dose of care and professionalism .

Generally, people don’t turn to Tarot readings when their love life is all rainbows and unicorns. That’s just how the human heart works. When a relationship is good we just celebrate it and forget Tarot, which is as it should be. When people come to the cards for romance guidance, it is for a reason. Usually that reason is not a happy one.

Often the pain of loneliness draws a client to a reading. However the client words the question, “Will I ever meet my soulmate or am I going to die alone and miserable?” gives you the gist of it. This should never be minimized or trivialized even when it comes from a young person. The pain is very real to them. They are up to their eyes in it, and likely can’t see beyond it the way objective outsiders can. A desperate longing for a marriage or long term partnership deserves a gentle touch and above all gentle honesty. It’s great to be able to deliver optimistic news and give a sense that a relationship is on the horizon. It is no fun to tell a person who is hurting that their deep desire is not in the cards. Many times they hear “not now” or “such-and-such has to happen first” as a flat “no.” If you are a Tarot reader, expect blow-back in those situations. A few perceptive souls can hear the “not now” kind of message. Others will go straight to anger and defensiveness. They need time beyond the scope of a Tarot session. Either the flare of anger will pass and a relationship will find them in its time and place, or they will repeat the cycle of unlearned lessons that brought them to the reading in the first place. Either way, the Tarot reader’s honesty helps them move along their life path closer to the loved one that they seek. Platitudes, predictions, smoke and mirrors are cold comforts that serve no one.

On the other side of the same coin, there are people who are already in important relationships. They come to Tarot readings when they are having problems or the relationship has ended. A few of these are relieved to be freed from a stressful relationship by a breakup or divorce, but are struggling with “what’s next?” Most are heartbroken. They are looking for ways to heal the relationship before it ends or to “get back together” after it does. This brings us to the trickiest part of a relationship reading: the other person.

There are two main considerations when a reading turns to any person other than the client themselves.

First, it just doesn’t work. It is back to hammers and cell phones. You wouldn’t use a cell phone to pound a nail and you can’t make a phone call with a hammer. Tarot simply can’t read minds. It can’t tell you if your ex still loves you or if you will get back together or why they won’t answer your calls.

The second and equally important consideration is the other person’s privacy and dignity. I find it ethically wrong to try and read anyone, whether it is actually possible or not, without their knowledge and consent. Consider what happens to that person on an energetic level, even if they are unaware that a psychic is reaching out to them. How would you feel if a stranger looked at your heart and mind and told your ex everything they saw, all behind your back?

Given all of that, I think it wisest to just not take any third party questions. Third party means anyone other than the person reading the cards and the person getting the reading. If you are reading for yourself, that means the cards are about you, and you alone.

There are exceptions, even to this rule. In some rare, wonderful circumstances that other person will voluntarily lend their energy to the reading. If that happens, of course I will say what I sense. When that happens, I view it as the third person’s consent on a soul level. Most of all it is a gift from that third person to the client. I will always say if energy comes in on its own, but never go out and seek it. In other words, the reading always accepts energy that comes in, but never reaches out to read energy without invitation. I always instruct the client to use discretion if they talk about the reading and the energy gift with the person who sent it. The other person may not be consciously aware that their energy touched the reading, and it is impossible to guess how they might react to the idea.

Romance and relationship readings deserve special consideration. They guide as usual, but also deal with some stronger than usual emotions. Tarot respects those emotions at the same time it respects the privacy and consent of everyone involved. Through it all, Tarot has a heart as it guides you through affairs of the heart.

12 Second Tarot: Temperance (aka the cure for Mecury retrograde)

Stop. Just stop for a second.

Take a deep breath. Take a look around. Get the information about where you are, so you can catch your breath and catch your balance before moving on.

Things have been pretty yang lately, energetically speaking. Yin and yang, outward, inward, pushing, taking in….all of those things apply on a mental level as well as the physical.

Choosing is a mentally active thing, even in those times when you choose to do nothing or choose to decide later. Choosing not to choose is still a choice, even when made through apathy or inattention. It is still doing a thing. So is stopping, at least for a moment, to regain your balance.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t resonate with astrology on a lot of levels, most of all with the whole Mercury retrograde thing. I mean, take a tiny step above the ecliptic plane and Mercury moves just fine. Look. Look at the planetary movement from the big picture, from top down. A little shift in perspective and POOF! No problem.

So stop. Just stop.

The cure for all the frustrations that social media looooves to blame on Mercury is to go from frenetic mental yang to a moment of mental yin. Stop. Re-calibrate. Re-orient. Re-balance. And Re-member how the solar system actually works. Think of this trick-of-eye retrograde time as a time for mental yin. Naturally, if you push and keep a frenetic yang spider-monkey-on-amphetamines state of mind during a yin quiet-and-observe energy time, you are going to be blocked and frustrated. If, as Neil Degrasse Tyson says, “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” then neither are the energies of the universe obliged to cater to your agenda. Like the rhythm of the planets, energies ebb and flow. Sometimes energy is right for a large and in charge King of Passions and Choices like we saw yesterday with the King of Pentacles. Other times the energies are right for a moment of watching, mixing, balancing.

The Tao in TaoCraft is about finding harmony with energies as they are then making a better way forward. Tarot has a card for that.

12 Second Tarot: The Energy of Choices Still Reigns

Yesterday, the Seven of Cups talked about the power of choices. No secret, one of my favorite TV shows. Current showrunner and writer Chris Chibnall wrote in the “Cold Earth” episode that “The future pivots around you, here, now. So do good” That is what the TaoCraft style of Tarot is all about. Showing you the choices around which your future pivots. It shows the choices that have brought you where you are, and can take you where you want to go.

Today, the King of Wands shows the power and control you have over those magic-seeming choices.

Not every THING, not every condition, and certainly not every person around you is under your control. If you are very lucky, you might have some influence. On the other hand, you are totally, completely in control of your inner world. You are the one to decide the interaction between your inner passions, your inner desires and the circumstances of the outer world. You choose whether to view the things around you as hindrances to your dreams, or as resources to help you achieve them.

My Tarot Valentine 2020: Page of Cups

Laugh.

Can you laugh together? Laughter is both a glue and a healing balm.

A loved one’s genuine, happy laughter will delight you to your bones.

Happiness is attracted to laughter, and true love is attracted to happiness.

My Tarot Valentine: Six of Pentacles

Edited with picsart app. Heart of Stars Tarot used with permission

Order email or video Tarot readings HERE, no appointment needed.

Contact me by text, voicemail, email or web form to schedule party or individual Tarot in select South Hills locations in Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Seasons Change

The year is young! The Four Seasons reading is still available and can help you navigate the energies ahead.

Since it is past New Year’s Day, I’ve discounted the Four seasons email reading to $20, but when the Equinox comes, both this layout and the special price disappears for a season or so.

Order yours HERE .

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Updated “about” page

My readings won’t tell you what is going to happen in life. They help you figure out what to do when life happens.

All of my readings have the same basic structure. Distance and in-person sessions give the same identical information. The only difference is convenience (email does not require an appointment) and the ability to ask questions in real time rather than emails back and forth.

All readings have these same basic parts.

Photo (or drawing) of your unique card layout
General pattern: any messages from the overall layout
Card-by-card discussion: meaning, layout position meaning, type of message from that card (advice, caution, validation, etc)
Affirmation based on your cards
Sigil elements: any shapes or sketches that intuition gives, if any. You may use these as elements to create a sigil for yourself if you like.
Psychic Summary: this allows for any impressions that come from intuition whether it is related to the cards or not. Often this includes helpful crystal, color, and aromatherapy suggestions.

Allow 45-60 minutes for an in-person session. All prices are flat rate, not per minute so you know your full cost up front. Appointment required for in-person and Party Tarot.

Distance readings are my specialty. As a writer, a keyboard is a direct-dial hotline into the best of my thinking and intuition. Since I can do this kind of reading almost anywhere, I do them all of the time, usually filling orders within hours, no appointment needed. I can type out a reading as easily as speaking it out loud in person, and give exactly the same information in both.

The small print: All the usual policies and disclaimers apply to all readings, Reiki sessions and meditation tutorials. The short version is that everything here is for entertainment, personal enrichment or spiritual practices, and does not ever diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any mental or physical illness. Nothing here can take the place of professional medical care. I don’t accept medical or pregnancy questions because Tarot just doesn’t work for that kind of thing. When you contact me, that indicates that you agree to the policies and use these services at your own risk; no liability of any sort is accepted.