spiritual growth – Sage Words Tarot

Meet Your Reader 2020

Hi. This is me from (mumble mumble) years ago. I still use this photo because it is the only one of me I’ve ever really liked.

This is me now, in Bitmoji form which is as good as it’s going to get because the website, blog and socials are mostly about Tarot, a little bit about spirituality, with a sprinkle crystals, meditation, spirituality and just enough off-topic things to keep it interesting. I want you to feel confident and comfortable ordering a reading here, so please let me tell you a little about the bitmoji-fied face behind your email reading or the voice on the phone.

I started reading Tarot cards around 1990 or so. Early 90s anyway. I was still in my 20s, had left my parent’s religion and was finding my own spiritual path. Tarot & oracle cards played a crucial role in helping me find a healthy way out of a fundamentalist evangelical upbringing .

I started reading for myself because, honestly, who could afford to use those phone psychics that were so popular back then? It took a little effort to find authentic readers and teachers in those pre-internet days, especially in an a conservative area where good psychics were still mostly underground. Eventually, I was very fortunate to have readings, workshops and intuition development classes with talented, brilliant people like Sallie Christensen, Gina Hiller, Joy Star, even meeting Ted Andrews once at his Animal Wise workshop.

It turned out that I’m actually really good at doing Tarot readings too. A good friend encouraged me to work online, so I started with Keen, Advice Trader and AllExperts under the handle Baihu. When dissertation expenses came along, I started working for myself and Modern Oracle Tarot was born. In 2018, Modern Oracle and Tarotbytes blog were expanded to include Reiki, meditation tutorials, and my Quirk & Flotsam Etsy shop. I renamed it all that Fall to create the TaoCraft Tarot that you see today.

I’m a Reiki Master-practitioner (2000)

I’ve been doing folk arts and crafts since my Grandmother taught me to embroider when I was 6 years old. Making handcrafted meditation beads was a natural extension of everything else at TaoCraft Tarot. The meditation beads are in the TaoCraft Tarot Shop along with ebooks like PeaceTarot and a few other handmade odds and ends that find there way there.

I’m a retired Tai Chi instructor (Chinese Martial Arts, Mount Lebanon PA 1998-99) but still love playing taijiquan. I’ve studied meditation, Taoism, Zen / Chan Buddhism and other spiritual traditions on my own from various sources through the years. In magick, you might call me a solitary eclectic.

In “real life” I have a Bachelor of Science in Medical Science and worked as a physician assistant in psychiatry and cardiology. When motherhood came along, I went back to school to be able to work independently, completing a Ph.D. in Natural Health. Although the school’s accreditation has since been withdrawn, my work and dissertation stands. The dissertation is available to view on RondaSnow.com. Needless to say, this is a science, logic and reason friendly Tarot style.

That’s pretty much all of it. It’s all Tarot and the good stuff from now on, at least until I get the urge to re-introduce everything next year at anniversary time. I’m really grateful to all of you, new subscribers and old friends alike. If nothing else, I hope this lets you know I’m nice, normal, nonthreatening kind of person who just happens to be able to read Tarot. I wish you all the best and hope you feel confident getting reading because there is nothing to fear here.

Today’s Tarot: Own it

Your inner world is yours. You are the king of the world inside your own heart and mind. You can’t have absolute conrol over outside circumstances and certainly not over other people. But, no matter how traumatizing your past may gave been you can make new choices and do things differently this time around. You choose the lens through which you view the world now.

The energies have shifted. Many of us expected, or wanted, the early months of stay home orders and quarantine to be a time of introspection and spiritual growth. We wanted to make peaceful lemonade out of tge big pandemic lemon. The energy wasn’t in any way right gor that, however. Remember the avalanch of pentacle cards that kept pulling our attention to the physical realm and the urgent, practical (and dare I say scientific) issues at hand. It was a time for engaging life a real way, even when real meant wearing your pajamas for days at a time and staring into the refridgerator every 10 minutes. It was time for dealing with the actual circumstances , not esoterica.

Now, I’ve been seeing an avalanch of wands cards. Now we know the practicalities. We know what to do: wear a mask all the time every time you go out, keep your body a hockey stick distance away from every other human body, stay home as much as you can and wash your dang hands.

Now the energy has shifted to that spirituality we expected earlier. Now is time to look inside. Look inside, and whatever you find there, claim it. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to judge you honest feelings as good or bad. They are what they are. If you learn what your inner landscape is like and then lay claim to it, then you can change whatever you don’t like – or turn up the volume on the things you like. In that way you can assume the throne of your inner world.

In this inner, spiritual way it is good to be the king. Own it.

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The Craziest Diamond

I’ve been an anime fan since Kimba the White Lion reruns circa 1970.

My daughter is an anime fan too (so proud!) She and I have been watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. We’ve made it to season 4 “Diamond Is Unbreakable.” It would take an entire blog to begin to explain this behemoth of a story line, but let’s just say a “stand” is like the personification of a superpower. “Shining Diamond” (the name is a reference to the Pink Floyd song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”) has a superpower where the things it hits, attacks or destroys reassembles to a changed condition that is better than the original…or it can directly heal wounds and injuries inflicted by others.

What if this ability is an analogy for one possible silver lining in all of this? I’ve been talking with friends and clients about how these pandemic times have been affecting energy sensitive people. What if one silver thread in this terrible dark cloud is a re-alignment on a spiritual or energetic level, akin to Shining Diamond’s healing objects or people who were previously torn apart?

What if our social connections are being stretched thin, even being smashed to bits in order for them to be put together into something new and better? What if we are being separated to make room for new relationships that resonate with our spiritual growth and our hearts rather than social connections of convenience?

It is a common thing for friendships to fade during times of spiritual growth and evolution, especially for people in their 20s and 30s. Old friends drift apart (or blow apart) and new, more attuned connections fill the space left behind. What if this is happening on a global cultural scale? What if we are being pummeled apart in order to be reassembled along like-minded spiritual strata? What if we are being blown out of our old tribes in order to find the tribe that matches our hearts rather than our habits?

I’m not saying that is what is actually happening, but it is an intriguing thought experiment, don’t you think?

There is nothing like a little social distance and time alone to put you face to face with your own heart and mind. Yogis, gurus, monks, shamen and spiritual people of every tradition have deliberately sought this kind of isolation. Stay home orders and social distancing has put us all on our own little mountaintop spiritual retreat. Or it should. It says something tragic about the inner peace of those who can’t make some adjustment at the cost of human lives.

For the fortunate, who have food, shelter, a job to do from home…for those, this is a gift. If, under those fortunate circumstances, “social distancing” is uncomfortable for you, could it be because you are uncomfortable with yourself? If you are uncomfortable in your own company, this is an ideal time to figure out why.

When you are good with you, it is a lot easier to be OK with other people. The popular thing on social media among the uber-positive happy people is to advocate for “self-love”. That seems strong. Why not aim for a little self-OK first? Self-love flirts a little too much with narcissism for my taste. Self-acceptance seems more real to me.

The first step to being OK with others is to be OK with yourself. We are one. We are all connected. Bigotry, hatred and intolerance are twisted forms of self-loathing.

A little time apart might help that. It’s like we are being hit full force by Shining Diamond. We are being blown apart to give us the opportunity to reassemble healed.