taoism – Sage Words Tarot

Tree Sitting

It doesn’t matter who YOU think the wisest man who ever existed is, the point is that their philosophy – whoever they were or whatever that philosophy is – it is derived from introspection. The introspection is the thing.

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Admittedly, my brain is getting in the way of intuition a little bit today. Or maybe this really is the energy message. I don’t know. I’ll let you and how much you resonate with the card decide that piece of it.

Often the four of cups has to do with someone who is sulking, or closed off. I see it often in relationship questions, which fits the suit of cup’s symbolism and connection to love, romance, and inner circle closest relationships of all types. It is often an energy of futility and unrequited emotion. It’s not good news in that context. Adages like “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,””throwing good money after bad” and “throwing pearls before swine” come to mind. Often this thread of meaning shows up in readings that are asking the “will I get back together with my ex-” variety of questions. You can’t control how other people feel and you can’t predict what they will feel or do, so the answer in that circomstance is sadly, no, the focus is internal. The message then becomes the advice of introspection….look within to do what you need to do to heal and hopefully progress to the move-on energy that the 8 of cups can offer.

But that, as they say, is another story.

Today, the card skips over all the closed-off energy and relationship advice. Today it cuts right to the chase and talks about introspection.

It resonates quite a bit with “Mr. Venn And His Nifty Diagrams” from yesterday on Sage & Stuff, my personal blog. That post was inspired by Hustle & Meditate the substack newsletter by meditation coach Jim Martin aka “The Unusual Buddha” plus an instagram post by I think it was Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch that spoke of mysticism and mystery teachings within witchcraft and magick.

In a nutshell, they both said the same thing although from different areas of expertise and separated by several months in time. The things they were saying were influenced by different cultures who came to similar conclusions a long time ago….despite being world apart in a B.C.E time where there was no trade or internet connecting northern Europe, India and China.

Both the Martin newsletter and the Auryn Instagram post conclude with the notion that, while we have much to learn from the masters who came before, we must each walk through the portal of learning for ourselves. We each have to walk our own path, carve our own way, experience the mysteries of the universe for ourselves and look at the moon with out own two eyes.

It is a bit of Isaac Newton meets Bruce Lee. Newton acknowledges that quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” end quote. Centuries later and inspired by a completely different culture, Bruce Lee admonishes his student in the movie Enter the Dragon quote “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” end quote.

Blind faith takes you nowhere. Accomplished masters can show you A way, but only you can walk it. Only you can see your true path through your own thoughts, contemplations and introspections.

Nineteenth century journalist, philosopher and father of Frankenstein author Mary Shelly, William Godwin once said that “The philosophy of the wisest man who ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.” Who you consider to be the wisest man person to have ever existed is up to you, but that too is derived from introspection – yours. Introspection is the thing, with this card and Godwin’s quote, but more than that, YOUR introspection is the key thing. The wisest person who ever existed may be a guide and a giant for you to stand upon, but it is still you that must do the standing, walking and moon gazing.

Thank you so much for reading and listening! I appreciate any likes, subs, shares, questions or comments that you can spare.

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Thanks again. See you Monday for the next short sip Tarot!

A Strange Sort of Keeper

Weakness is a strange thing to keep, but only the things you keep can be transformed.

Welcome to TaoCraftTarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here

I’m not an expert on Taoism. The philosophy has been a big part of my world view and how I live life for well over 30 years. It has held true for me and I come back to it time and time and time again. I’ve been reading The Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Alan Watts, Chinliang Al Huang, Deng Ming Dao and more since the 1980s. Taoism predates Tarot for me, which is saying something.

Like Tarot and magick, exoteric Taoist philosophy (I can’t speak for the religious aspects or for esoteric Taoist practices) is broadly inclusive. If you think of the Tao as the multiverse sort of meta-everything then anything written within our universe about it is part of the greater whole and a valid point of view. Therefore, as someone once wrote, everything written about the Tao is canon. Be that as it may – if you are interested in Taoism, go grab a book and have at it. Good stuff, that.

If you want to learn more about the esoteric side of Taoism I highly recommend Benebel Wen’s excellent book The Tao of Craft. It was published just as I was beginning to lay the groundwork for rebranding Modern Oracle Tarot into TaoCraft Tarot. I took it as an omen that I was on the right path even though that path is more on the philosophical, exoteric side of things.

I mention it Taoism because today’s Strength card brings to mind probably one of the most Taoist ideas to come out of a card reading in a while. This deck hasn’t touched the Taoist vibe very much. Speaking of decks, today I’m working from the Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund. The artwork on this particular card is by Madam Clara for the Five Cent Tarot.

Taoism is about being in harmony with nature. Sure, that means the rocks and flowers and trees and bees kind of nature, but it also means your nature. Taoism is about living in harmony with your authentic self.

Being in harmony with your authentic self doesn’t mean you can’t do better next time. Authentic self does not mean static self. People change. Ideally people grow and mature and hopefully become wiser and kinder as time goes on.

Part of that nature, for some of us, is to be hard wired people pleasers. The idea of strength and weakness and being a better person is often tied to idealism more than realism. The path to being a better person is often fraught with “should” and “ought” and external definitions of good and external measures of character. We tend to want to eradicate or drastically change anything that is considered a weakness or a character flaw.

The major arcana Strength card is all about strength of character, not at all about the physical variety. Internal progress is measured internally, not measured to outside signposts.

It is a strange thing to say consider keeping your weaknesses. Perhaps instead of getting rid of our weaknesses, we should keep them, but learn a new relationship with them. Find and use the good aspects.

Repurposing a weakness into something beneficial still gets rid of the so-called weakness. It is a strange sort of keeper, to hold on to what some people might label as weakness. Transforming our downfalls into superpowers is a Strength all of its own.

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Links are in the episode description for podcast listeners.

Thank you again. See you at the next sip!

Do for you

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today, the eight of pentacles and the stuff you do for you.

Welcome to Tao Craft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the eight of pentacles, which points to work and productivity.

Which is too bad because I’m a lazy, lazy girl this morning.

Headphones on, listening to one of my favorite playlists on Spotify, drinking coffee and writing about Tarot (or knitting) is pretty much my happy place. Life is good at the moment.

But life isn’t always comfy chairs and cinnamon latte.

Shit happens, and when it does, empty platitudes and pep talks are no help whatsoever. Today’s energy could too easily slip into that. On the surface it could sound like some kind of suck it up buttercup, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps puritanical platitude.

Today’s energy isn’t suggesting that you can just cheer up, work hard and everything will be ok. Far from it.

It is suggesting that there is a whole world of coping mechanisms out there. A healthy lifestyle is something that you do for you. The emphasis today is on the word DO. Work isn’t all bad. The hack is finding the right kind of thing do for where your head is at.

When I saw the card, it reminded me of another life long ago in a galaxy far far away. One of the psychiatrists I used to work for back in my long abandoned physician assistant days always said that a job is as good as therapy. It wasn’t for all of the toxic anti-welfare, racism tinged, right-wing-ish reasons that might spring to mind these days. He was talking about structure, diversion, and self esteem.

As supportive as structure and getting something – anything – done in a day can be, I’m not talking about actual depression or real world problems here.

The same kind of advice about structure, diversion and accomplishment re-emerged during pandemic quarantine. For the average person under stress or in the occasional normal doldrums, accomplishing something – anything – in your day can be the little boost that you need. The degree varies from individual to individual and from day to day. Some of us secretly get off on going mach 2 with our hair on fire. For others, fresh pajamas and getting the dishes done is enough.

Self care is as much about mindset as action. For some people self care and a mood boost is all bubble baths and candle light. For others it is turning up the punk rock and cleaning the house. Anything, even being productive at some kind of work or project, can be self care.

The point in all of this is to do the thing that is right for you and your day in the amount that is right for your needs…but for goodness’ sake do SOMETHING. It might make you feel better than you think it will. Even if you are a lazy, lazy person like me.

Like everything for me, it gets back to Zen and Taoist philosophy akin to the old adage “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” Self care and stress management doesn’t have to be fancy, high minded or separate from life. Like Zen spirituality, self care and stress management is all about the moment to moment mundane living of life.

If you will allow me to indulge in a moment of fangirling, Madam Adam, one of my favorite social media follows, put it absolutely brilliantly. It was spot-on perfect when I first his post yesterday, and the eight of pentacles this morning confirms it. As he said “self-care is doing what you do anyway, but doing it with intent.”

Bullseye!

Through simple intention, anything can be self care including a day of work and productivity. Through simple intention, the mundane becomes magick.

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Making donuts

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Today’s card is the Knight of Pentacles.

One of the best clues that your wrinkled backside is getting older is when you get the references that old an old commercial made when people younger than you don’t remember the ad making the reference.

Way back in the 1980s, a certain very popular and rather delicious donut chain had a tv ad where a hardworking and longsuffering baker would plod out of the front door ridiculously early in the morning because it was “time to make the donuts.” This repeated until one time he opens the door to find – himself coming home.

Never mind any jokes about him “finding himself, ” I don’t know how many people remember the “Time to make the donuts” commercial much less the visual reference to the phrase “meet yourself coming and going” which is an old school way of saying that you are so busy and bothered and working so hard and moving so fast that well,you meet yourself coming and going. Which is pretty sci fi violate-the-time-space continuum notion for the ancient before times if you think about it.

But anyway – donuts.

Beside the fact that donuts are a pure soul-level goodness in and of themselves especially when paired with a cup of coffee, the making the donuts thing speaks to the knight of pentacles and today’s Monday morning energies.

Some days are mystical and magical and ideal for contemplating the spiritual. Other days are for just doing, focusing purely on the physical. Some days are for frenetic effort where you meet yourself coming and going. Other days are for regular, reliable and routine donut making. Today feels like the latter type to me. Pentacles are earth element, focused on practicality, the physical realm, work and career. Knights are symbolic of action and activity. Put them both together and you have a reminder that it is time to make the donuts.

Sometimes the simplest donuts are the best. They all don’t have to be jelly filled with sprinkles on top. Some days there is nothing better than a no-frills sour cream old fashioned.

The word “plodding” comes to mind. Pamela Smith uses the posture of the horses to communicate the energies of the knight cards. This guy is standing still, as opposed to the full gallop you see on the knight of swords card. This is another reference to the solid, rooted, balanced, grounded energy that the Pentacle cards posses.

Not every moment has to be joyful. Not every moment has to be tragic. Some moments you just make your donuts without any drama. That resonates with the Taoist notion of wu wei, accomplishment without undue effort. Just because it isn’t a big struggle doesn’t make it lesser. Donuts that were easy and routine to make taste just as sweet.

By the same token, it’s not about doing nothing at all. It’s not about being neglectful and careless and just phoning in the bare minimum. Bakers who make donuts like that won’t stay in business for very long. The Knight of Pentacles today captures an energy of wu wei, of doing what needs to be done and doing it well but without a lot of unnecessary fuss or bother. It’s a day of making easy but excellent donuts.

Thank you so much for listening! Your support for this blogcast through Tarot reading purchases, likes, subs, shares, follows and Tarot Table memberships is always, always appreciated.

Just a reminder that things are going to be a little chaotic this week on the blogcast and on social media. For example, if I do a “You Choose Interactive Tarot” reading at all this week it will probably be tomorrow. Maybe. It’s spring break 2022 at our house so social media is low on my priority list. Email Tarot readings, however, are the same always. Email Tarot is open and available to purchase 24/7 without appointment.

Thanks again. See you at the next sip!

Listen

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the King of Cups

The energy of the card today isn’t quite typical for a King card. It fits a minor arcana court card, just not the usual boilerplate interpretation of the Kings per se. Often court cards, or the face cards as they are called in the modern game playing deck, are an in-between energy. They have more zing than the number cards in the minor arcana, but not quite the wattage of the major arcana cards. Kings represent the yang side of leadership. They are outward facing energy, very proactive and protective. This card is still connected to leadership, but in a quieter, more castle and keep sort of way. Cups are tied to closeness and emotion. The King of Cups is but in an intimate one to one sort of way. The King of Cups is an leader within the emotional and intuitive realm. The King of Cups is a mentor.

Here I am reminded of that old TV show Kung Fu. My Grandfather loved it because it was essentially a western and anything with cowboys and horses was high on his list of things to watch. We used to watch it together all the time, but my favorite parts were the flashbacks to the Shaolin Temple with “grasshopper.” I guess my affinity for Taoism and Chan Buddhism started at a pretty young age, come to think of it. That is so not a typical thing for 1970s evangelical appalachia, believe me. I think that memory comes to mind just now because of the mentoring relationship between Master Po and Kwai Chang. Yoda, Luke and Obiwan also come to mind if you prefer the Star Wars mythology.

Mentoring is an interesting relationship somewhere in between friendship and detached mass education. It is far more than just a one to one tutor. It is a friendship with a little airspace, allowing for correction and redirection.

Chingliang Al Huang, who collaborated with Alan Watts on Watts’ masterwork The Watercourse Way, wrote an excellent book on the topic The Tao of Mentoring. I’m guessing none of you will be surprised to learn I read both of those ages ago. But I highly recommend the Tao of Mentoring for anyone who is considering a career that involves one to one guidance like, for example, holistic health consulting or Tarot readings.

There aren’t many Yodas or Master Pos around these days, but guidance and mentoring is available to anyone willing to listen.

I don’t remember it exactly, but I once read a quote about how it is ok, even good to spend time alone. Sometimes we have to be alone to realize just how deeply connected everything really is. It has also been said by Robin Williams, Maya Angelo and others that it is far worse to be in the middle of people and life and things….but still feel alone.

Whether we are literally alone or feeling alone in the middle of other people, the King of Cups reminds us that we are never cut off from guidance and mentoring. The volume gets very very low sometimes, but never quite goes away. I’ve said it many times. Spirit speaks in whispers. Intuition is our ability listen to those whispers.

You would think I’d like the ASMR thing on social media. But honestly, I hate it. I must be wired differently from most people. Those whispery, breathy vocals especially make me want to yeet something at the TV or chuck my headphones across the room. But it comes to mind as an example for that process of listening to the whispers of guidance that comes from the collective unconscious, spirit guides, angels or however you name such things.

The King of Cups is quieter today than a typical king card reading. That indirectly reminds us to listen to real world mentors. The King of Cups, being a leader, reminds us that the best mentors listen too.

And thank you for listening to this blogcast now. See you at the next sip!

The blogcast and the companion videos are not monetized so they depend on your support. Tarot readings purchased through this website, Tarot Table memberships & “buy me a coffee” donations on ko-fi all contribute toward creating this unique, freely available Tarot content . Please support this project as you are able. Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated too.

Busy isn’t bad

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.

When you look at a fine art sculpture the space it defines around it as sometimes as much a part of the composition as the space it occupies. Today’s card has a little of that energy. It’s not a caution energy, but it isn’t quite straightforward advice either. It feels a little like a power slide into a parallel parking space in a movie, or one of those internet memes where Wong portals in, gives some disturbing trivia and leaves out the same interdimensional portal.

Or maybe that’s just me because I’m a lazy, lazy girl.

If someone says “self care” to me, my first thought is coffee, readings a good book or taking a nap. The thing that the Two of Pents pointing toward is the fact that mental rest and re-balancing is not dependent on physical inactivity. Physical rest is easy. In modern America, we need a reminder to easy up on the mental stress.

You can do stuff without stressing over it. Arguable, you do more stuff and do it better when you are in a calm, relaxed state of mind.

This goes along with that Two of Coin’s quality of dynamic equilibrium. Maintaining balance often requires movement and adaptation. Spinning things are more stable, like a top or a bicycle or a gyroscope.

The sweet spot is a balance between activity and calm, being physically busy but not psychologically stressed about it.

Taoist philosophy describes it as wu wei. Chinese is notoriously difficult to translate. Sometimes wu wei is translated as inaction or not-doing. That isn’t to say that Taoists somehow think things will magically get done while we sit and to nothing. The translation “effortless action” seems more apt, especially in the context of this card. Both wu wei and the two of pentacles are pointing toward physical activity without mental stress.

A sense of accomplishment and productivity is a pretty nice feeling at the end of the day. Mental stress is not. A significant amount of stress is pressure we put on ourselves. It is almost as if we think easy things are somehow less valuable or less worthy of our precious little time. Again, the two card points us toward a sweet spot of balance. You don’t want to underestimate, neglect or minimize a situation, but you don’t want blow a molehill up to be Mount Everest either. That’s the balance the Two of Pentacles brings to us today.

Busy isn’t bad when it is balanced with inner calm. Mental rest and quiet is still self care, even when it happens in the center of a storm of external activity. Moving meditation is the perfect example, and a perfect way to practice mental calm in the middle of physical business. Walking meditation is very much a part of some Buddhist traditions. Of course, Tai Chi is the best known example of meditation in motion. Which circles back around to one of my very favorite Alan Watts quotes “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is to just peel the potatoes.”

It’s ok for things to be busy. It’s just as ok for busy things to feel easy while you do them.

Thank you for reading and listening. The blogcast and YouTube channel are not monetized and depend on reader and listener support. Email Tarot readings purchases here on the blogcast site, Tarot Table memberships and buy me a coffee donations all contribute to the creation of this Tarot content. Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated!

See you at the next sip!

Birds of a Feather Inspire Together

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is The Star from the major arcana.

Birds of a feather flock together. Like attracts like. You are what you eat.

Adages and Proverbs become adages and proverbs because they have proven themselves true for a long, long time. And they tend to apply to a variety of situations.

That whole birds of a feather, like attracts like thing is huge advice for lonely hearts in search of a soulmate. In other words, be the soulmate you want to bring into your life. Do you want the romance of your life to be with a person who is all tied up knots and focused solely on their own feelings or would you rather be with someone who is happy and engaged with life? Be the bird you want to feather with.

It isn’t all soulmates. Like attracts like applies to many other things too. It begs the question of what, exactly, attracts you.

Human beings, it seems, are absolute geniuses for projection and confirmation bias. We see our own desires and our own opinions everywhere we turn. Who you follow, the things you support, the things that inspire you tells the outer world as much about you as much as those things tell you about the outer world.

Curate your inspirations. Actual conversations with actual people aside, would you want to have your social media “likes” as real world meat-space friends? Would you want to be part of their group?

Social media platforms are literally called a feed. We consume media. What would happen to your body if you constantly fed on toxic things? Why would you take any less care with the media you consume? Block and unfollow buttons are powerful protectors is you use them.

I love my social feeds. I’ve met beautiful, kind, wise people from opposite ends of the continent that I never could have met otherwise. Instagram is especially fun since I tend to be a bit visual. My feed is filled with artists, photographers, poets, Taoism, meditation, witches, civil rights groups, some of the best Tarot readers out there, recipes, coffee memes and a fair bit of yarn porn.

There are some pretty wonderful things out there in cyberspace, not just doom and gloom. Of everything out there, what things grab your attention? Who inspires you? The Star card reminds us to take care that those things and people are worthy of our attentions and our aspirations.

Thank you for reading, listening and watching. The blogcast and youtube channel are not monetized and depend on your support. Email Tarot purchases and Tarot Table memberships contribute toward creating TaoCraft Tarot online content. Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated too.

See you at the next sip!

The deck pictured is Steampunk Tarot by Barbara Moore and Aly Fell used with permissions granted on llwellyn publidhing dot com.

The Whole of It

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Today: Nine of Swords

Apologies to podcast listeners. Due to a technical glitch, yesterday’s “You Choose Interactive Tarot” didn’t go out through the podcast after all. It is available on the blog for anyone who is interested. Link is in the episode description.

Today’s card is the nine of swords.

Like most cards, it has several threads of meaning. Today two threads are stepping forward, universality and direct proportion.

Experiencing some degree of worry and anxiety is never easy, but it is ubiquitous. It is pretty much a universal experience. There is an adage attributed to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Alexander Graham Bell to the Positive Mom blog and back again. It has long been said that “if you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.” Just look at babies learning to walk. The greatest among us took a few plops on the old diaper at that stage of life. Or as Thomas Edison actually said, “I never failed at making a light bulb. I just discovered 99 ways NOT to make one.” It is just the human experience. There is no walking without a few falls and there are no light bulbs without a hundred not-lightbulbs. In the words of the R.E.M. song, “everybody hurts, sometimes.”

Alan Watts gives us a hint at the other thread of meaning. He reminds us that “we cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” That shouldn’t deter us from experiencing life any more than a small sit-down should deter us from walking or a blown light bulb should deter us from finding a light.

If we experience life through a pinhole then worry comes as pinpricks. But pleasure can be unsatisfyingly small in proportion. Worry and anxiety can be artificially large sometimes. The hopeful side of the nine of swords is that on the other side of worry, relief can come in equal measure.

Thank you for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. If you enjoy these blog posts and nano episodes, please like, subscribe, follow and share.

Thanks again….see you at the next Sip!

Today’s Tarot: I’m Proud of You

If you are serious about living an enriched life and being a better person, then stepping outside of your comfort zone – even for a moment – is inevitable. That happens a lot in Tarot. The cards will nudge you toward a better path even if that means kicking you entirely out of your comfort zone in the process. This post might be one of those moments. It is for me. Today’s card uncomfortably pokes at some old issues, but imma just say what intuition gives anyway. This post is a little sweary and political. If you are not up for that, no worries, just skip it and come back for the next post. I’ll be back to my usual religion and politics avoidance policy by then.

Evangelical dogma and connotations around the word pride is reason nine thousand ninety-nine hundred and eleventy-one why I ran screaming from my family’s religion.

I was raised in the American evangelical subculture by the church deacon and Sunday school teacher who helped found the town’s first Southern Baptist affiliated church. (Yeah, THOSE Southern Baptists in the WaPo article) That kind of thinking turns the innocent word “pride” into something wrong and guilt-riddled. They turn pride into a sin (as do Catholics, so I’m told.)

If being happy with who I really am while proudly celebrating the authentic selves of the people I love is a sin, then hail Satan and pass the asbestos underwear! See you in hell, frens!

It’s a stretch, but I’m guessing the “pride” they are talking about is maybe a language artifact. Language shifts and evolves over time, even when fundamentalists don’t. Bronze age manuscripts filtered through medieval translations and bent to contemporary evangelical ends frames their version of “pride” as being unbridled ego. It makes sense that, in a world before psychology, a mental state like that would be attributed to a more common word like pride. If you define it in those terms “pride goes before a fall” isn’t wrong. Out of control narcissism leads to poor choices and risky behavior (like, for example, the former president who was supported by 80% of white evangelicals according to NPR)

Whatever the reason, it is still a shame that the newer, healthier connotations of the word pride is often haunted by these older, negative, derogatory undertones.

It’s June, so it’s not psychic or paranormal for my thoughts turn to Pride Month.

With the Four of Wands today, the words “quirk” and “celebrate” step forward. “Quirk” is the name for superpowers in the anime My Hero Academia that we’ve been watching lately. Superpower or not, socially acceptable or not, “quirk” here means anything that makes you unique and is a key part of your individual, authentic self. “Celebrate with pride” comes strongly to mind.

This is where it gets uncomfortable. I am reminded of reason number 1 why I ran screaming from the evangelicals: bigotry. Rampant, pervasive, intractable bigotry including overt homophobia. Not every single individual certainly, but the words that pour from those they collectively elevate to their pulpits speaks for everyone in a congregation. Loudly.

The ministers are literally in front of and above everyone else when they speak. Imagine the heartbreak as a teenager when they would nearly yell bigoted bullshit about “the homosexuals” when I had friends in the community who where some of the kindest most compassionate, open, inclusive loving people I’ve met to this day.

The Four of Wands is about community celebration. It is about lifting others up.

And it can be about embracing those who were rejected by their birth families because of who they authentically are. I love those “I’m your mom / dad now” memes supporting lgbtqia kids who are rejected by their own families. Anybody the evangelicals reject is prolly my kind kind of people.

The Four of Wands is about celebration. Authenticity is something to celebrate. People living their truest life is a profoundly happy thing. A lack of self esteem can make us more prone to bias or worse (a 2011 article on psychologialscience.org is one quick example) Confidence is fuel for compassion. Pride in ourselves breeds compassion for others which leads to pride in those around us which creates acceptance which seeds even more self esteem and so it goes. Pride not only isn’t a sin, it arguably makes the world a better place.

Pride month is a lesson for all of us. It is hard to hate others when you are comfortable with yourself. Those of us with privilege are exponentially more responsible to protect and celebrate and uplift Pride Month.

I used to think that my experience of leaving evangelical religion and coming out as a tarot reading, science loving, Taoist, atheist and witch gave me a teeny tiny partial keyhole glimpse into what it is like for the lgbtqia+ community on both sides of the closet door.

If there is anything at all I’ve learned from Pride month about being a good ally, it’s that being an ally doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with me. Pride month for an ally is about being proud of other people – proud of the people we care about.

If you are living an authentic and kind life – I am proud of you.

Celebrate who you authentically are. Celebrate everyone else’s authentic self too. But don’t let the celebratory pride slip into the self-centered pride. Pride and a safe and welcoming place is something for every month, not just big business June advertising. Although I kinda like all the rainbow tshirts. And the one big burger place donating a portion of their chicken sandwich profits (including Sunday sales) to a lgbtqia+ organization to troll the anti-equality uber christians that run that other chicken place. I’m all the way down with that particular cororporate move.

I celebrate with you because I’m proud of you and who you really are.

All are welcome here.

Related: The Niggles: What’s In A Name

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Today’s Tarot: Hanging Around

In Carl Sagan’s fiction work Contact, Ellie Arroway is a scientist involved with SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intellence (which is a real thing.) In it, at one point, she considers not only the vast distances between Earth and other potential homes to intelligent, communicative life, but also the role that time inherently plays. Obviously, it take a heckuva long time, even at the speed of light, for one side of message to get from there to here and vice versa. What if there is also a vast difference in lifespan and local experience of time. A few days to us is a lifetime to a fruit fly, and many generations to a germ. As she was driving she noticed crack or bumps in the road at fairly regular intervals. What if, she wondered, the pulses in a signal came so slowly, so widely spaced that we didn’t even notice the signal, with each blip of the message just being dismissed as an anomaly.

Makes me wonder if the universe isn’t really teeming with intelligent, communicative, technological life but each at such widely disparate time scales, that nobody can connect with anybody so that everybody thinks they are the only ones…but that something for another time.

The same phenomenon can happen when it comes to our interaction with Tarot, or any form of esoteric guidance, even pure intuition. Sometimes the whole idea gradually unspools over days, weeks or months until finally the last piece falls into place. If we miss a piece, the message goes on until finally the “ah-ha” happens.

A single card daily meditation practice is an excellent way to get a feel for this among many other things. Not only do you get a specific read of the energy for that specific day, you can see patterns emerge over the course of days, weeks, even years. My personal example of that is the strong presence of pentacle cards during the first part of the pandemic and the evolving intuitive images of the U.S. map with all the little tornadoes and the hurricane on the horizon that both reflected the overwhelming cultural zeitgeist energies that were so strong during 2019 & 2020.

What say you empaths? Has the cultural and environmental energies stopped ringing your bell quite so hard? I think that is the impetus behind the speckled stone image. Boundaries are firmer, individual concerns are at the fore and the existential political crisis (at least locally here in the US has dropped into the background somewhat.)

Today’s card connects to yesterday’s Four of Swords card which connected to previous readings. There is a continued thread of change & rest themed energies.

The Hanged man connotes stagnation, but this energy hasn’t been hanging around long enough to take on that interpretation. Hanged Man can also mean surrender, changing your way of looking at things – it can take on exactly the wait, don’t push, change what you are doing, rejuvenate, and contemplate energies we’ve been seeing. My hunch is that this kind of energy is going to be around for a while since we’ve seen it in a multi-day pattern like this. Astrology might ascribe this to some planet in retrograde or something. I don’t know anything much about astrology, so I attribute this to a yin phase, a time of quiet, of taking in, minor adjustments. It is a time of plugging in to recharge in whatever metaphoric sense you want to give the phrase.

If there is a message specific to today, I sense “patience.” Not everything unfolds at the pace we want or expect. There are reasons patience is considerd one of the great treasures of Taoism. Just like messages from aliens, life unfolds at its own natural pace, not according to our wishes.

“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson via brainyquote.com