witchcraft – 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.

It’s that renew the website time of year, so any support you can give through reading commissions, shop purchases, memberships or virtual coffees on the TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi page all goes toward creating these (almost) daily Tarot readings for everyone to enjoy.

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

Pedantic Pointer Fingers

NEW! This post is now a Clairvoyant Confessional podcast episode!

“It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory.”
Bruce Lee

I’m not a collector by nature, but I’m convinced that professional Tarot readers should have multiple Tarot decks and plenty of books about them. Sure it is a good excuse to indulge in something we already love but decks are, after all, the tools of our trade. Mechanics use more than one size of wrench and your phone has more than one app, doesn’t it? Owning multiple decks isn’t only fun, it has practical application.

It’s said that two heads are better than one. More decks are like having more heads. Different decks mean different artwork and different insights from the guide book that typically comes with them. You can draw from all the different decks you’ve used over time to give your client deeper insights regardless of the deck you are using at the time.

Let’s consider the High Priestess card that I drew a few days ago. To paraphrase Edward Waite, the Justice card is a “spiritual mother” who interprets rules and dogma in a more spiritual way. In keeping with Tarot’s roots in the deeply Catholic culture of medieval France and Italy, Waite’s interpretation calls to mind a Saint-like or Mary-like spiritual role for the card.

Contrast that with the Steampunk Tarot by Barbara Moore and Aly Fell. It is one of the decks in my small collection and this is a photo I took of the Justice card used here under the ‘tarot education’ permissions granted on Llwellyn.com

Moore interprets the card as symbolizing something that can only be understood by direct experience. This in turn reminds me of an Instagram post by author Mat Auryn that talks about witchcraft is considered a mystery tradition not because it is a highly guarded secret, but rather because it can only understood through direct wordless experience. Both versions of the card together reminded me of the Bruce Lee quote. Anyone can point to the sky, but only you can experience the beauty of the moon for yourself.

The different cards combined with the quotes that they brought to mind all point toward an important core idea: spirituality is a direct, individual experience rather than external dogma or the product of didactic training. Among many other things, the Justice card reminds us of great mysteries and the way to experience them is directly, for ourselves. Look to the moon, not to pedantic pointer fingers.

This episode is based on the TaoCraft Tarot Blog post by the same name. There is a link to the source post in the episode description. If you have any questions about Tarot, intuition or, well, just about anything please let me know. Questions will be chosen at random or by the Clairvoyant’s caprice to be answered on air, maybe with a tarot reading. Contact information is in the episode description too.

Thank you so much for listening! See you on the print side and see you next time in the Clairvoyant’s Confessional.

Bookshelf: Sigil Witchery

I’ve been into Taoist phliosophy since the late 80s, out of the EX-Christian closet since 1992, out of the Tarot closet since the early 2000’s and out of the atheist closet since 2012. I only have one closet left. I don’t rock a goth style in my old-ass middle age but I admit to seeing the world through a witchy lens along with everything else. My “magick” (yeah, I spell it with a K because I think it looks cool and makes an important distinction between philosophy/way of life magick vs stage & entertainment magic.) is a low-key, in the flow, actions-and-words to align my intent with the natural way of things sacred-in-the-mundane variety.

That being said, this worldview is another part of the rebranding from Modern Oracle to TaoCraft. Not all witches are Tarot readers, and not all Tarot readers are witches. The way I see it, to borrow from Bill Maher, if you made a Venn diagram of Tarot, Taoism, Reiki, and my version of witchcraft you’d have damn near a circle. They are different iterations of the same thing. Parallel paths to the same mountain top. Different words to say the same thing. Tarot, Taoism, Reiki and Witchcraft are all just slightly different ways of viewing the world, living in harmony with nature and the natural flow of universal energy.

Thus the new “Bookshelf” series of posts. On Modern Oracle, I wrote a few posts singing the praises of a few favorite spirituality and Tarot books. I plan to expand that here, fan-girling over favorite books, old and new, about all of those super-overlapping circles; Magick, Tarot, Reiki, Meditation, Spirituality with assorted other bits of inspiration and entertainment.

First up in the new series is my latest read, Sigil Witchery by Laura Tempest Zarkoff. Whether you resonate with any form of magick or not, I consider this an essential read for any Tarot enthusiast. The well researched insight into symbolism at it’s most basic level can easily and effectively be brought to bear reading any Tarot or oracle deck. She enriches the most basic shapes and components of images with primal meaning. Those ancient and primal meanings then add another layer of meaning to the artwork on our decks, enriching our reading of the card. In interpreting a card, we can use the assigned meaning for the card blended with our own intuitive understanding of the card, and season it with the underlying significance of the shapes and symbols contained in the artwork as well.

My interest in sigil craft actually began with some of the most potent power symbols -words. Sallie Christensen told me in a reading one time that thoughts are powerful, spoken words more so, but the written word is the most powerful of all. Sigils are even more potent and focused. Working with written words has one energy, one magic. Working with sigils is a similar but distinctly different energy wavelength.

Sigils are power symbols created from words. There are different methods of creating them, which Zarkoff relates briefly. Then she goes right on to elevate the whole thing far above what has been before. As an artist, Ms. Zarkoff understands the emotional and subconscious impact of shapes and overall composition. A sigil constructed from the letters of a reduced phrase, or from the lines traced from letters on a magic square are perfectly fine, but the seem to be dominated by straight lines and spiky shapes. With Sigil Witchery, we are given a method for creating sigils that are pleasing to the eye, heart and mind. Better still, her understanding of how to incorporate sigils beyond setting them on fire and releasing them to the ethers makes sense, and, again, elevates the art and craft of sigil drawing.

For Tarot readers, go, read this now. Use what you learn about symbols and art to better appreciate and interpret your cards. If you are interested in sigil making as well, this is the book for you. Sigil Witchery is pleasant to read and easy to understand. Because Sigil Witchery is such an elevation of the art, and because the classic source of sigil craft is so very hard to read and follow (Austin Osman Spare) I suggest reading a mid-step introduction to sigils as a primer before reading Sigil Witchery. (I read Practical Sigil Magic by U.D. Frater. *See note below.) Having that little extra background only helps a reader to appreciate Laura Zarkoff’s accomplishment even more.

Sigil Witchery is available at major outlets like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on the author’s website at https://www.lauratempestzakroff.com/shop.html

*Frater’s work is rooted in “Chaos Magic” and some portions of the rituals described might offend some. The first half of the book is an excellent distillation and explanation of Spare’s approach to sigils. The second half of the book delves into ritual magick and, to my way of thinking, an undue, pedantic, overwhelming amount of detail about complicated ritual and so on. If you are inclined toward that style of things, this book is for you. To be honest, I bailed. That kind of detailed complicated ritual just isn’t my path. No slight to Frater, his writing, Spare or Chaos Magick. It’s a good, well written book. The subject matter isn’t for me after the sigil basics were over.