Tag: south hills tarot reader

Learn With Me: Lenormand, snake and fish

Learn Tarot: lenormand fish and snake

Learning Tarot is a process, and part of that process is repetition.

Last time we looked at Lenormand cards, we started to explore two card combinations, which seem to be a big part of the Lenormand style of Tarot reading. Often when particular combinations of cards are seen, the meanings for the cards change a bit, not unlike a reversal in RWS style cards and readings.

The best way to understand that connection seems to be two card sets. It makes sense to understand the foundation, the building blocks of a larger layout before using a larger layout. In RWS style, that foundational building block is the single card reading, which plugs into the individual positions of any layout which is then woven together in a meta-analytical, intuition driven way. I’m still learning Lenormand along with you, but it seems to me that building block isn’t single cards, but the underlying connections between 2 or 3 cards, like a flat mat with dots (single card meanings) stuck on top.

To put it in arts and crafts terms, RWS is knitting while Lenormand is paper-making with speckles on top.

Today we have snake and fish.

So starting with that foundational fabric, what is the common energy matrix behind the Flow and suppleness are common traits between the two.

The fish are associated with prosperity. The snake in the guidebook is associated with typical western cultural meanings like deceit and deviousness. Intuitively, however, I am reminded of Chinese astrology. People born in the year of the snake are said to be competent, wise, intuitive and passionate. When I put all of those aspects together the two-together message is to protect your resources through wisdom and know-how (akin to a four of pentacles combined with an ace of swords sort of vibe)

I’m not sure if or how the playing card insets factor into it. Queen of clubs with the snake is akin to the queen of wands – which reinforces the idea of self-care, in the form of caring for physical resources. The king of diamonds is like the king of pentacles, reinforcing the notion that this is about common sense, physical realm money management more than some sort of grand spiritual lesson.

Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes, as these cards seem to stay, you just have to mind the budget, even at the holidays. The energy here is all about practical, level headed things, unrelated to spirituality or emotion. Once we make the physical stable and safe, then we can turn our minds and hearts to the spiritual, emotional and intangible.

Between now and New Year I don’t intend to hold to any particular schedule other than doing email private readings as they come in.

Usually I try to do the Learn With Me on Wednesdays and the Substack newsletter as a weekly digest on the weekend, with one card posts as often as I can manage on weekdays.

I’m still of two minds about the “path through the week” thing on Mondays.

What do you think? What kind of readings or posts would you like to see in the blog? For goodness’ sake don’t be shy. As long as it isn’t spam, by all means post your questions or suggestions in the comments. Contact info is in the right hand column (or bottom of the page on mobile) too.

I’m planning to do a bunch of re-introductory and behind the scenes posts over the next few weeks sliding in and around day job, private readings and the holidays.

If you want a private Tarot reading by email, you can order it HERE anytime, 24/7 no appointment needed. I’ll get the typed reading with a photo of your real-world card layout to you usually within 24 hours.

Thank you so much for reading! See you at the next sip!

Learn With Me: Lenormand, The Dog

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It looks like we are off to a very good start.

The general plan is to learn about this Lenormand deck in the same way we recently explored the Publishing Goblin oracle dice and before that my new and much used Alleyman’s Tarot Deck.

There is no teacher quite like experience, especially when it comes to something as subjective and individual as intuition and oracles. The basic strategy over the coming weeks is that I’ll pull a random card (and post the draw on YouTube Shorts. I did that this week but the the technical glitch gremlins got to it)

After the random draw, we’ll read it purely intuitively based on the collective energy of the day – just like we read the collective energies for the week each Monday.

Then I’ll go to the guide book, which in this case is sparse, around a paragraph per card, and summarize what it says.

A word on guide books in general:

Use them as a tool, but not as an authority.

There is no dishonor in finding inspiration when you need it.

Guidebooks are great in situations like this to help you get comfortable with a new deck or technique. Guidebooks are essential when you are very first learning to read cards at all, like the DIY one card meditation readings you learn how to do in my book PeaceTarot.

Even after reading for 30 years, there are still times when I look at a card and get exactly nothing. Tarot readers are human and nobody is perfect. If you hit one of those I-got-nothin’ moments then it is perfectly fine to fall back on either a guidebook or a memorized “meaning” It will prime the pump so speak, and spark the intuition that you need for genuine reading that is of the energy of the moment.

Today’s card is The Dog.

The image on this particular deck is warm and sunny, and I associated it with all of the positive happy energies of the RWS major arcana card The Sun. Dogs are the essence of loyalty and friendship.

Clearly this is a good start for making friends with a new deck.

It has a sense of reciprocity today, too. “To make a friend, be a friend”

In the moment, it feels like making friends with this deck is going to be easy.

The guidebook doesn’t add much, just reiterates the “faithfulness and loyalty”

The guidebook isn’t much help in this little learning project we have going. I may just give the key words in the beginning and just give it an intuitive read from there.

Do you have any thoughts which would be more helpful to you? Comment if you like. Guidebook keywords at the beginning or end?

It’s interesting that the card is connected to the 10 of hearts. You can read the suit of hearts much as you would the suit of cups in the RWS decks. It is about emotion, happiness, closest inner circle relationships….like your closest friends.

PeaceTarot also teaches you how to use playing cards in place of Tarot cards to use the guidebook meanings in PeaceTarot if you prefer playing cards or if you don’t have access to a RWS style Tarot deck. 10 of hearts is equivalent to the 10 of cups, which has to do with happy family and happy (and loyal) relationships. It all fits.

If this card resonates for you today, it is a reminder to appreciate the friends and emotionally close people in your life. Tell them. Show them. Check in with them. Be a friend today.

If you are feeling friendless, befriend yourself. Just be patient and kind. It’s like playing fetch with your favorite doggo…throw some kindness out there and life will fetch it back sooner or later.

Thank you for reading. The short and sweet newsletter for this week will post on Thursday morning.

See you at the next sip!

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Image: author photo of her purchased copy of Healing Light Lenormand by Christoher Butler copyright 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.

Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot, introduction part 2

Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot introduction part 2

Want to try a mini Lenormand Tarot reading for free? Leave a question on the Ask Me Anything page (or in the comments below)*

Ledoux, Jeanne Philiberte; Mlle M. A. Lenormand (1772-1843); The Bowes Museum (public domain)

Let’s meet one of the most famous card readers in history, Marie Lenormand through one of the most respected living Tarot readers, Mary K Greer.

This is only a quick thumbnail sketch about Marie Lenormand and the oracle / Tarot decks named for her. This is based on Mary Greer’s excellent article, the guidebook to the Healing Light Lenormand deck by Christopher Butler and our friend, Wikipedia. By all means, if you would like to learn more please visit and read the source material.

Last week, in part one of this introduction, we talked about being self-taught or self-initiated in Tarot. In a sense, it is unavoidable. Even if you take every class, read every book, only you can interact with Tarot. It is going to be your own unique experience and it is going to be wonderful and it is going to be just as valid as your teacher’s experience. Or mine. Or Marie Lenormand’s.

As best as I can tell from these few sources, Marie Lenormand as as self-taught as any of us. She is said to have received her first cards as a gift from “gypsies” (Butler) who taught her to read the cards. True or not, self-taught or not, Marie Lenormand seems to be a self-made person. Born in 1772 in France, orphaned at a young age and raised in a convent, Marie went on to be author, poet, and fortune teller to the stars and celebrities of the time including Robespierre and Empress Josephine.

As remarkable as Marie Lenormand was as a Tarot reader, it is even more remarkable that Lenormand Tarot we know today has little to do with her except her name.

A larger deck, “La Grand Tableau” was first published shortly after her death in 1843 and the more widely known 36 card “Petit Tableau” came significantly after that. (Wikipedia)

It seems that the Lenormand card decks were more interested in connecting with her fame as much or more than any techniques or particular cards. The Lenormand deck we’ll use in this series is the petite tableau which is based on a popular mid nineteeth century game “the game of hope” by Johann Hechtel (Butler)

While there may be little information about Marie Lenormand’s actual cards and methods, there is information about the how the cards with her name have been used over the past 150 or so years.

The entire deck is laid out in a grid….

And I stopped reading right there.

We just finished with a complex oracle.

Live is messy and complicated enough. I work best with people who want clarity and understanding. That, in my experience, is what oracles are for: clarity, comfort, creative problem solving. Oracles are for cutting through the fog, no a lot of smoke and mirrors. If there are people who can find comfort and clarity with that whole deck approach – have at it.

I’m going to approach the Lenormand deck with the same roll up your sleeves, tuck in and let’s learn this approach that we used with the 22 Oracle Dice and the 130 card plus Alleyman’s Tarot which is the same approach I used to learn Tarot in the first place 30 years ago.

It. Just. Works.

Or at least it works for me. I hope it is helpful to you, too.

Next week, we’ll start exploring one randomly drawn card at a time, connect them by pure intuition to the energy of the day, then coordinate that with the guidebook writer’s interpretation of the card. After a while, we’ll connect the cards using the Energy path and TaoCraft layouts that I wrote. Don’t worry I’m not going to hit you with the potential confusion and contradictions of large layouts. Seven cards is the largest number of cards I use in any reading ever with any deck.

Next week: Let’s do this thing – drawing a Lenormand card.

Tomorrow: weekly newsletter

Friday: revisit the growing energy card for this week, The Hierophant reversed

Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!

Sources:

Butler, Christopher. Healing Light Lenormand © 2021 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission.

Greer, Mary K “Mlle. Lenormand, the most famous card reader of all time” copyright 2008 accessed via https://marykgreer.com/2008/02/12/madame-le-normand-the-most-famous-card-reader-of-all-time/ on September 27, 2023

Greer, Mary K “In the Sybil’s Boudoir” copyright 2015

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Anne_Lenormand#Early_life

The Devil is in more than the details (Newsletter 21 September 23)

Weekly digest 9-21-23

The Devil isn’t just in the details…it’s all over the darn place.

Life isn’t always pretty, so Tarot isn’t always pretty. Sometimes the best thing a reading can do for us is break through walls of denial, yoink the rose colored glasses off of our faces and yeet some jade ones into their place.

The Devil card from the major arcana is the ultimate card for that aspect of Tarot. It’s up in your grill with cold, harsh reality -usually just when you need it most. It isn’t a call to fear. It is a call to courage.

There are reasons why positivity can go toxic. If there is nothing but light you are just as blinded as you are in pitch dark. It takes both light and shadow to see.

The Devil card’s reminder of the dark side can vary anywhere from the common sense to the dire and dramatic. The purpose isn’t to scare you – the purpose is to put you on an appropriate level of guard. Have batteries in the flashlight when a storm is forecast. Park in well lit areas and have your keys ready as you go to your car. Have the hard conversation with your significant other. Admit people you care about have the capacity to make bad choices – and sometimes do.

There are gnarly things out there in the world. The Devil card reminds us that there are people out there who really don’t have your best interest at heart and this might be a good moment to take stock, face facts, and be safe.

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Newsletter 14 September 23

Meditation Tarot reading & newsletter

Admit it.

If you don’t know, you will later if you stick with this for any amount of time.

Own more than one Tarot deck, that is.

If you are a Tarot enthusiast you probably have a deck or two around, especially if you read very often. If you are a professional, it goes double. We all end up with more than one deck. Most are self-purchased, which shows what baloney the superstition about being gifted your first deck can be. The tradition of it has value, I suppose. It would boost the confidence of a young reader and tie them to some degree with a mentor, or at least connect them to a more experienced Tarot reader one way or another.

Some of the professional Tarot readers I know have dozens. Oodles and shelf loads even. I’m not a collector by nature and started off swearing that a good reader should only ever need one deck – so of course I have 10.

Choosing a deck for a reading is the same as dealing with reversals. When you get right down to it, it is a matter of pure intuition.

With reversals, I just feel my way through it and decide if the reversal should be considered as PART of the card’s message, or whether it was just happenstance in which case I just flip the card right side up and move on.

Same with picking up the deck for these collective energy blog readings or private email readings. For in-person readings, I carry two decks in unmarked tarot bags with me and let the client choose. I have one deck, the only one gifted to me, that I use only to read for myself. I use the Alleyman’s, Heart of Stars, and 1909 RWS primarily here in the blog – the first two because their creators have graciously granted me permission to do so and the latter because it is in the public domain.

Often I’ll compare and contrast the different decks when I’m doing a one card post like this. Different decks visually capture different facets of the deck. You can do the same thing by doing an online image search to browse different decks.

Today’s card is a good example. Some cards use fairly consistent images across decks. The three of swords, for instance. It almost alwasy has some iteration of three swords in or around a heart. I don’t know if that is by design, by coincidence or the sheer strength of the card’s presence in the collective unconscious. Other cards, like the five, differ. The RWS above gives a sense of “cleaning up” after a battle, both in the literal sense and in the modern meaning of profiting to the max. The figure seems to be picking up dropped swords, smiling and making gains from the suffering of others.

The Heart of Stars portrays the figure as more egotistical, even sadistic or disturbed taking a form akin to the Joker in the Dark Knight series of Batman movies.

Witches Tarot with art by Matt Evans shows five swords arranged tips together and downward in the sky with a dragonfly and fairies (I think hinting at the trickster wishes granted in Fea and Genie lore)

The five of swords made by Sam Dow for the Alleyman’s Tarot shows a throne made of a tree with swords in the roots.

All show victory but at a high cost or some sort of concurrent loss, but all have subtle differences that shift the emphasis.

The advice today is basically try not to shoot yourself in the foot as the saying goes. Ask yourself if the victory, the win, the competition is worth the cost.

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Announcements

*card image Waite Smith 1909 Tarot, public domain

Liminal Foundation

Energy Path Tarot reading for the week ahead

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Merry Monday!

With these fresh cards, it finally feels as if we have moved past the focus on cycles and change and ebbing and flowing. No Moon card or tide images today.

In one sense it feels like we’ve cycled back to that still, “slack water” image that came through a few weeks ago when the big Moon card energy first appeared, but it isn’t “slack” at all, really. It feels more like alert, deliberate, poised, ready-to-move stillness. It is a liminal energy, and the word balance doesn’t quite capture it. It isn’t the dynamic balance or back-and-forth balance that we see in the Temperance and Two of Pentacles cards. It feels more like a flat out, steady, matter-of-fact “BOTH” It isn’t balance or tension between opposites, it is the steady presence of diverse things without tension among them, without a need to balance. That “coexist” bumper sticker comes to mind. 

Oxford Language defines liminal as “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.” The “both” part is key here. Not balance, not cycle, not give and take – flat out all of the above, all at the same time.

It is interesting that we have two aces and one major arcana card. If this was a ‘yes or no’ kind of just for fun reading, it would be a plain YES. We all know Tarot doesn’t really work that way, but I think yes or no readings can be helpful in limited situations. Usually in minor choices where the options truly are equal and the situation is something that could be decided by an actual 50-50 random chance coin toss. Yes/no readings are exactly that – a coin toss, but with slightly more food for thought from three randomly selected Tarot cards adding their two-cents to the conversation.

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September 11 – October 31 2023

Ask a yes/no question in the blog comments to get a FREE “Zombie Cat* yes/no Tarot reading in an upcoming blog post.

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The fading energy is the Ace of Cups. This is a card of creation, creativity and emotions. The current energy is the Ace of Pentacles. The real message is in the two side by side more than either one fading or growing individually. Here is where that liminal both-ness we were talking about earlier is strongest. It isn’t head over heart or emotions over intellect…it is BOTH in generous measure. Think “emotional intelligence.” These two cards together give an energy that is alert, engaged, feeling but thoughtful, active and effective – all at the same time. The two together are an extraordinary foundation upon which to build.

The growing energy, the Magician, is exactly that building process. The Magician is about transformation and manifestation – not just sitting and wishing. In “as above so below” the below is your part of the deal, your end of the table to lift. You do your part in the practical-pentacle part of life, and the universe helps the emotional-energy-spiritual-psychic part. Neither half is better or worse or more important than the other. It isn’t even a see-saw balance of the two. It’s both, all at the same time. The Magician’s magick is about having a foot firmly planted on each side of the “as above, so below” equation. 

That is what makes up liminal spaces and energies and that is what makes up our energy flow for this week. 

At least as it stands now. Please come back Wednesday for another “Odinsday Oracle” post and Friday for the Weekend Update where we’ll take another look at the Magician, our growing energy card to see how it unfolded during the business week and what, if anything, there is to see about the weekend.

Thanks for reading. See you at the next sip! 

*Meet Zombie Cat: This cartoonish alter ego does all of my yes/no readings. Tongue in what’s left of his cheek, Zombie Cat readings have a 100% guarantee to contain word and a 50% chance of being dead wrong.

Alleyman’s Tarot used with permission

We Made The Machines

The only real oracle is human intuition. We made the machines that make the art.

public domain image via creative commons

I’m as cyberpunk as the next Tarot reader.

Probably way more so. There are reasons why I thrive doing email readings. They are my best work, tbh.

But there are also reasons why I love using the Lofi Girl / Lofi Chill aesthetic to describe my Tarot style. I can be all synthwave and cyberspace but still keep the lo-fi human touch which is the whole point of Tarot in the first place.

78 cards raised to the power of near infinite combinations of any one shuffle raised to the power of layout position times the different layout possibilities – is a bigger number than I can calculate. Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great explainer on TikTok about the shuffle thing.

Tarot excels at dealing with human thoughts and emotions but there are some things about the human condition and external environment that early Tarot readers could never imagine.

Imagine what will come to be that is off the far front of OUR radar.

If I were to create a brand new Tarot card, it’d be technology of some sort. Maybe a cyberpunk looking radio telescope. I think some oracle decks already have cards like that.

Artificial Intelligence and machine made art is one thing early Tarot readers probably never envisioned anything like that, at least not in those terms. If they imagined it, I’m guessing it would have been understood in a different context. I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Their magic is our AI.

We made the machines that make the art. I wonder if anyone has made a Tarot deck with ChatGPT yet. If not, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.

Regardless of who or what or how the cards are generated, the one, the only, the true oracle is pure human intuition. Cards are just tools no matter what tools humans use to create the cards.

As far as I know, you can’t mimic intuition with a bot.

All I know is that I don’t use any of it.

Email is as technical as it gets with my readings. The readings will always be me, a keyboard and a photo of your unique real-world actual physical cards in a real world, actual, physical card layout – no AI at all.

The problem with AI right now is not so much the technology as the copyright. I actually like the AI generated aesthetic that is everywhere on social media these days. I’d love to have book covers look like that – but I’d feel terrible taking a REAL artist’s creation for a book cover without their knowledge or consent. So I haven’t even played with AI for fun yet.

I know the amount of work it takes to write something and write it well. I respect copyrights and intellectual property and expect the same in return. While the posts on Sage Sips blog are non-derivative noncommercial attribution share alike creative commons 4.0 licensed. That means you can quote and share all you like so long as you give me credit for writing it, don’t change it and don’t charge money for it. Fair enough, right? Especially considering everything here is my own creation, my own hard work – no AI help at all.

Next up is the three card Energy Path reading for the week that will post on Monday, but for now it’s time for my lo-fi human self to go get another cup of coffee.

See you at the next sip!

Weekend Update Rolls On

The Wheel turns into the weekend.

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Yesterday was quite a week as they say. I personally am very glad to see the weekend get here. I’m also still into the idea of revisiting the energy path reading from Monday to see if and how anything has unfolded now that it is, thankfully, Friday. Four days is nothing so the changes won’t be dramatic, ever.

Time does keep turning, just like the Wheel major arcana card. “Churning” comes to mind as well as an active old-fashioned water wheel or the paddle wheel of an old Mississppi River steam boat.

On Monday, the “growing energy” card in the pathway layout was the Wheel. It is by nature a churning, changing, dynamic kind of energy. I think the Wheel’s energy has increased a bit over the past few days. My sense of it for the next few days life will be on the energetic side. This is a major arcana card, after all. I hear (‘hear’ meaning the intuition comes as words instead of mental images) “dating” “social” – in other words it is a good time to get out and around and be social if you are feeling it.

Spirit, energy, life, the universe and everything doesn’t care about our expectations much less our calendars and schedules. In the bigger picture of it all, four days really is next to nothing in the flow of time and energy. Let’s look at a bigger pattern that we’ve seen over the past few weeks of readings (August 21-28, August 28-September 9)

First there was Moon card energy both up front and underlying these current cards. There were a series of water and tide images. Tides are literally associated with the actual moon, so that certainly fits the card. First we were given the image of “slack water” that wasn’t moving much, then the tide turned and flowed inward, and now I get the image of an outward flowing tide, which would match that social, outward, dating and fun energy that came through a moment ago.

This week we have the Wheel card, which is a card of change. That part of the Wheel connects with the “natural cycles” meaning of the Moon card. The cycles meaning has been the dominant moon card meaning this whole time, and the wheel card is validating that. The wheel card is all about change, but also luck, good fortune, taking action so it gives an even stronger “the tide has turned” feeling. The Wheel takes the softer, gentler ‘natural cycles’ Moon energy and makes it much more active, energetic, churning. The tide not only has turned, but it is picking up speed.

Continuing with the water and ocean analogy, the idea of “undercurrent” comes through here. I get the feeling that a subset of us is still flowing inward, with an energy of deep introspection and a need for alone time to sit with difficult emotions and circumstances still exists. In my mind’s eye I see the Five of Cups again and now also the Hermit card.

So as always, follow and trust your own instincts. Allow what your emotions and body is telling you it needs. If you feel pulled to be out and about and are in the mood for a light, fun weekend then by all means indulge if you can. By the same token, if you feel gloomy and introspective, don’t fight it. Sitting with that side of things helps us to acknowledge, process and let go in a healthy way.

Weirdly, I get a sense that this won’t break along the expected introvert/extrovert personality lines or along any sort of pop culture stereotypical lines. It feels very individual with a mental image of mixed grains of salt and pepper. The best way I can describe the feeling is that this weekend may be a good chance of each individual of us to make friends with our inner opposite. Channel your inner Barbie – or inner Wednesday Addams – as the case may be.

No matter which side of the yin yang symbol you are feeling the most, have a good weekend! Next up: a new Energy Path reading for the week of September 11-18 will post on Monday.

See you at the next sip!

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Odinsday Oracle: Traitor

Etteilla Tarot (public domain) via Alleyman’s Tarot (used with permission)

Yep – back to the the Odinsday Oracle title because Odin was the god of wisdom among many other things in Norse mythology and because I have an irrational enjoyment of alliteration. Wednesday will be oracle card day unless there is a “Learn With Me” series running. The next one of those starts September 20 when we look at the 36 cards of the Lenormand Tarot. I’ll be using the Healing Light deck specifically (Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler © 2020 Lo Scarabeo srl, via Cigna 110, 10155 Torino, Italy. All rights reserved, used by permission)

Today – back to the Alley. One of the many things I love about The Alleyman’s Tarot is the way Seven Dane Asmund not only gives broad permission for the deck to be customized by the purchaser, but it was intended for that, which perfectly fits the herd of cats that is Tarot readers at large. The whole point of the deck being mis-matched and eclectic from the very start is so cards can be added and subtracted and made into something entirely unique and intensely personalized to the reader using it. A master artist’s skill is evident in any medium, but the experience is synergistically and exponentially elevated for everyone when superior tools are used. It’s like the relationship between a master painter and superior pigments, a master chef and the freshest ingredients, or a master violinist and a Stradivarius violin.

My thing has been to separate the traditional-structure Tarot cards from the “Strange Suit” and “Other Arcana” cards. When they arrive, I’ll add the Alleyway Secret Oracle cards from the more recent Publishing Goblin LLC deck and use the sum total for our Odinsday Oracle posts. As always I’m grateful for permission to use the cards here and in social media posts.

This particular card is the “Traitor” from the mid-1800s Grand Etteilla deck in the French National Library.

The weird thing is that I’m in a little bit of an “I got nothin'” place with the card even though it speaks volumes to me on a personal extended family thing that I’m not going to talk about here because privacy (btw – I go just as hard protecting YOUR privacy, even with the ASK ME ANYTHING questions that are answered in the blog)

It doesn’t help that this is such a succinct, straightforward card. It reminds me of Corban Dallas’ one word answers in the Ruby Rhod scene.

The card is just what it says. Someone’s trust has been betrayed. Are you the betrayed or the betrayer? Where have you made mistakes and misteps either in placing your trust or allowing trust to be placed in you?

Today’s oracle Traitor resonates with Monday’s Five of Cups

No matter which direction it flows, disappointment and betrayal are difficult emotions to process. They are hard mistakes to learn from and all the more painful is there is choice or deliberate action as any part of the situation.

Sometimes you just have to sit with those feelings, experience the whole thing, maybe even wallow for a short while in order to reach a place where you can let the emotions go and things can start to change for the better.

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Heal, Contemplate, Release – again.

Tarot reading for the week: it will get better when you get to the point that you can let it go.

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Hello and welcome to the Energy Path reading for the week of September 4 – 11. I’m glad you are here.

Change and cycles are still a thing this week, but in a different way. It feels like it has moved from a general environment thing to being more personal advice. The lingering Moon card energy from the past few weeks feels like it has turned a corner, ebb is beginning to flow. The mental image here is outgoing tide, not at all the “slack water” energy from a few weeks ago.

At the same time there is emphasis on change. Now it has shifted to a more intense, personal, evolutionary change more than broad, gentle, slow, tectonic shift natural cycles.

Two other things come to mind, generally.

First, we are responsible for who we are now. Yes, life has been hard. Yes, you have experienced trauma of all sorts. Yet, you can heal, you can rise again, you can overcome. Destruction becomes disappointment becomes release.

It gets better when you get to the point where you can, at last, let it go.

“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts

Second, as I listen to my favorite darkwave playlist-

If we choose who we are now, why do I and others choose dark, goth-ish, witchy, INTP, neon cyberpunk self-expression.

Yes, I said choose.

We could be all bright and karen and hot girl summer if we wanted to do that – but we don’t.

And we are doing right by ourselves and our souls and for society at large by doing so. I am reminded of the adage that religion is for people who want to avoid hell while spirituality is for those who have already been there. Perhaps the kindest people are the ones unafraid of the dark because they have walked there so often before.

Sometimes, the most revolutionary thing you can do for your shadow side is to admit it exists.

Why revel in what some call darkness? Consider the alternative: false, toxic positivism.

The Ten of Swords truthfully and directly acknowledges our injuries and our circumstances. The figure stays face down and flat to allow the profound change of either death or healing to begin.

This phase is fading. We’ve been down, so to speak, but the tide is turning. It is time to once again rise.

We rise, not fully transformed, but with lingering disappointment. Traces of old experience can cling. Now is a time of contemplation, of coming to understand what happened and is happening. Swords may be intellect and action, with a certain physicality to it all, if not from our physical person then from our social environment. The Five of Cups is about the emotional aftermath of whatever the Ten of Swords represents for you.

Growing energies are the Wheel. This is the change of the death card plus the cyclic nature of the Moon card plus the transformation energy of the Magician card all rolled into one. We are coming to a potent time of change, and a potent time of choosing the person we will be five minutes from now.

We are under no obligation to be the person we were before but we are under every obligation to choose who we will become five minutes from now.

Cruel or kind, the choice is yours.