The season and the energies with it are definitely shifting.
That is most likely a projection on my part. I’m torn between a sense of ease on the professional side of things and my annual spring annoyances on the private side (THAT rant is better suited for my Other Words blog.) But the good news is that the name change and chaos of remodeling is finally, by and large, done – just in time for the equinox.
In a sort ofTaoist style, I’m going to set something I want to do to be in alignment with the change of seasons.
I want to stay in touch with you all…I am truly grateful for everyone who reads this or likes the social media posts or listens to the podcast such as it is. I want to keep this real and human and warm and conversational. I’m so, so, SO done with the marketing hustle. If you want a reading with me – great. I’ll do my absolute best for you. If you don’t want to purchase a reading – welcome to the blog. You are more than welcome to browse the metric crap-ton of free content that has accumulated over the years. If you have any questions about any of it, please, by all means let me know. The blog comments are open (but moderated so behave yourself) or you can email the contact in the right hand column of the blog ->
I’m cautiously optimistic about the posting schedule from the March 8 post. So far it has survived the first few weeks of contact with reality. I’m hopeful that will hold steady for a good long while.
Cue the Death Cab for Cutie song “Meet Me on the Equinox”
In the hope of new people joining us over the six months I want to introduce myself in detail to new readers on the equinox – March and September. If you have heard all of this before you can skip it. I won’t be offended. The last thing I want to do is bore you to death. The whole point of Tarot is to inspire, to spark an idea, to hint at a solution, to give navigation help along life’s path.
Social media and marketing experts have always advised us blogger, social media and cyberspace types to introduce ourselves to new readers. I’m thrilled to bits to have any new readers and I want everyone old and new alike to feel at ease here. Transparency not only builds comfort, it builds trust.
Normal, everyday, ordinary, common courtesy and business practices are important to me and an essential part of you knowing that this isn’t a scam. I shouldn’t have to introduce myself by saying “Hi! I’m not a crook!” but that is what a sincere energy worker is forced to do because of the scams and misinformation that have abused genuine intuitive work over the decades – centuries really. But again, that’s a rant for the other blog.
This time, the whole introduction and up-front transparency thing is easy.
I wrote a whole booklet about it. And it’s FREE to download with the button at the top of the page. Here’s some of what you’ll get:
How to find a psychic you can trust
A short history of Tarot cards
glossary of Tarot terms
How a reading with me works
Explanation of the layouts I use (and wrote)
Example email reading (think of it as a written transcript of a spoken, live reading – they all work the same way and say the same things)
Distance vs in-person Q&A
About Relationship & Romance readings
Tarot and medical questions
My Tarot biography
Meet me on the equinoxes – or anytime through the free TaoCraft Portfolio download.
TaoCraft: Portfolio is a behind the scenes look at our Tarot readings including how to find a trustworthy psychic, layouts, Q&A and more.
If you want to get to know me before getting a reading with me, this booklet is a great way to do exactly that.
Click the button above to be taken to the instant download.
This is a free item, but any “pay what you want” or “buy me a coffee” tips support the creation of free Tarot content on this blog, the podcast, the YouTube channel and across the socials.
If you want to get to know me before you get a Tarot reading, this FREE ebook is a great way to do exactly that. “I want to show you the art of Tarot and this book is my portfolio.”
“I want my Tarot readings to be more like a conversation with a friend than a big drama. I want to earn your trust with this behind the scenes look. If you want to get to know me before scheduling a Tarot reading, then reading this ebook, this is a great way to do exactly that.
When an artist interviews for a job, they bring a portfolio of their work so the potential employer can decide if they are a good match for the company or project. This booklet will help you decide if we are a good match to work together.
I want to show you the art of Tarot and this is my portfolio.”
– Sage Snow from the introduction to TaoCraft Portfolio
Click the cover to get your FREE download
Thank you to #kofichallenge for the inspiration to finish this project 🙂
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Contented? More please! Sage’s Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it take to sip from your coffee
In Tarot, we talk a lot about what to do when things get bad. What do you do when things get good?
Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Short Sip podcast where it is all Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.
This week’s energy has a lot of the Zen and Taoist philosophy influence that I wanted to honor in my previous blog name, TaoCraft Tarot. To be clear, I don’t mean any of this as any sort of cultural appropriation. When I was in my twenties, at a time when I was running for my life from a toxic subculture, I finally found a safe space and indulged in all of the Tarot, Taoism, Zen and magick reading I could get my hands on. Those ideas and philosophies helped me to grow into a much better person and made my life magnitudes better. Taoist principles like simplicity, honesty and authenticity are the foundation of my Tarot work to this day. The foundation of everything, really.
This week’s cards weave together around that core. The three cards together bring to mind the idea of suffering and satisfaction.
When you say it that way, it reminds me of the scene from Harry Potter where they are learning to read tea leaves and Ron reads Harry’s as something along the lines of “you are going to suffer, but you’ll be happy about it.”
The energy today brings to mind the opposite and begs the question:
Are you happy but suffering about it?
I follow a lot of artists on social media. Bruce Brackett is as fierce and fearless in his self-expression as you would expect a professional artist to be. The fan snaps, cups of love, and “negativity be gone” catchphrase is brilliant. I forget the main point of what he was saying the other day on TikTok. A side comment captured my attention so much I don’t remember the rest of it or even exactly when it posted.
It was about how he was able to take an accomplishment in stride, and wasn’t feeling overjoyed about it, “just” content. I’m paraphrasing heavily, but he said something along the lines of “I suppose I’m not supposed to be overjoyed at everything.”
No, no you’re not. None of us are as far as I can tell.
Where there is yin, there must be yang. Where there is light there must also be dark. Where there is overjoyed, there is also sorrow. Where there is lasting, there is also fleeting. Given the big picture and broad spectrum of all that life can be, content is a pretty darn good thing.
Buddhism talks about suffering. Set illness, aging, injury and physical suffering aside for a moment and let’s think about the mental and emotional side of things. No, not really set it aside – just make it the second domino in our cascading line of thought. Mind affects body and vice versa, so all of this can get around to the physical benefits of stress reduction and so on…but I’ll leave that to the holistic health folks to think about.
Suffering in the philosophical Buddhist sense can be thought of as dissatisfaction, or in other words a lack of that precious content feeling Mr. Beckett described. Suffering can be, and often is totally subjective and completely within our frame of mind.
It’s like that pastina recipe that has been popular lately. Being hungry is a physical suffering . Among those who are well fed, however, a bowl of humble pasta might leave one person comforted and content while a meal at the best restaurant in town might leave another person dissatisfied and secretly filling up later at the fast food joint down the street.
Things are good.
There is a pretty, floaty, quiet little snow happening outside my window right now. I have a private Tarot client this afternoon as tasty leftovers in the ‘fridge for lunch between now and then.
Right here, right now, in this precious moment life is good and I am content. I want to take this opportunity to tell the universe how deeply grateful I am. More of the same please. I wish contentment for us all.
For this week, the two of pentacles is the fading energy card. I don’t think that means things are becoming unbalanced. The two of pentacles hints at a dynamic kind of equilibrium. I think this means the need to pay active attention to our life balance may be fading a bit. It feels like things may be settling into a new normal.
Three years ago this week the world was tossed into the global pandemic. I’m not saying that’s over. That is outside of anything Tarot and way outside of my expertise. But wearing a mask on occasion and keeping up with new vaccine boosters is a new normal that is easy enough to live with. Things are striking a new balance that is solid enough to let us turn our emotions to other places.
Current energy is the nine of cups. The suit of cups symbolizes our emotions, which is why they are so closely tied to romance and relationship issues. This reflects the subjective nature of contentment. Nine symbolizes fulfillment, or a good outcome to something. When is enough ever enough? This hints at that feeling of contentment were just talking about.
Growing energy is back to the practical pentacles. The seven reminds us that you reap what you sow, so might as well sow good things.
That there will be a harvest at all is a magical, comforting thing.
All in all, these cards are reminding us of all the changes we’ve been through. It may have been a struggle to find balance, but we are at a place where we can find new balance points and find a new normal. This new balance (the energy, not the shoes) has brought new good things with it, but it is up to us to realize the good things about here and now. Dwelling on the changes robs us of a new sense of contentment. We may not be overjoyed at life, but neither do we have to despair. Like that old adage says, people are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
What are the good parts of our new normal that we can seed for the future and hopefully hang on to for a while?
Sage’s Short Sip blog posts and podcast episode are a Tarot contemplation for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Thank you so much for reading and listening. I appreciate each of you.
Just a quick reminder about the links in the episode description. Nothing I do is advertising monetized, so I can put your Tarot message absolutely first. Private readings by email along with the paid subscription blog “The Daily Sip” supports the free Tarot readings here and across the socials. Please visit the links and support the blog and podcast if you can.
Learning by repetition includes the person writing this stuff
I’m letting my INTP personality show a little with this one. Admittedly I live in my head a little too much and can get repetitive with saying things…for the simple reason that it helps me wrap my mind around what’s going on and try to stay a little bit organized in this Pagan Squirrel Rave that we call life.
Pagan Squirrel Rave you ask?
It’s from a meme.
“I don’t have ducks. I don’t have rows. I have squirrels and they are having a pagan rave.” is one of the best, and most entertaining metaphors for the way life has been lately, especially for the Tarot part of things.
So I’m running through all of this again in the guise of keeping you up to date (and introducing myself to new followers) but it is just as much to help me “stay on target.”
Here we go:
Monday: Three card week ahead readings free for everyone!
Tuesday – Friday: One card “Daily Sip” blog Tarot by paid subscription.
Weekends: unscheduled long read, Q&A posts exclusive to the free blog
Follow BOTH the free and subscription blogs to get everything!
Sage’s Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
Zen teaches us that only an empty cup can be filled.
So what do you do when your cup is full, when things are good?
That CAN happen, by the way. It’s probably happening right now. Check it out. Shift your attention away from your screen in 3, 2, 1 – NOW. Pay attention to what is around you.
Are you at work? Cool! You have a job and some degree of income! Are you doom scrolling? Cool! You have a device and internet access to scroll with! Are you in physical danger? If you are, get off your phone and do something about it for cryin’ out loud. Have you had something to eat today? Did you get a little bit of sleep last night?
I’m not saying that you don’t have anything on your mind. I’m not saying that you aren’t struggling with anything or that your health is perfect or you have no emotions or emotional pain. Everyone deals with something sometimes. Call it the price of admission to this brief and shining spark we call life.
Pay attention to just this minute for a minute.
Paying attention to right here and right now is what we call mindfulness.
What fills your cup right now?
If you spend your life waiting for champaign, you are going to miss the clear, cool, clean, life-giving water that is there right now. If things are good, drink up.
If things are good, drink it in with gratitude, and make room for more to flow in.
What if the water in a cup is stagnant, or bitter, filled with dirt or germs? Drinking from that would be a bad idea. Instead do what you can to clean out the cup and find a better drink. That requires emptying the cup to make room for more to flow in, too.
How do you know where the good things are to fill your metaphoric cup once there is room in it?
Today’s card is the King of Cups. It symbolizes emotional maturity, emotional protection and healing, mentors, teachers and spirit guides.
Cups and water are timeless symbols for exactly this kind of spiritual, intuitive, emotional learning. Going back to cups and water as an example.
How do you know where the clean, healthy, flowing water is? We don’t necessarily know. We don’t have to know that alone. Teachers, mentors, students and mentees all have a way of finding each other when the time is right. When you are thirsty and your cup is empty, ask for directions to the nearest water fountain. If you know where the clean safe water is, it is up to you to give directions to the empty-bottle thirsty people.
Knowledge and guidance and life flows like water. We all have cups. Drink from the flow even as you help others to do the same.
Thank you for reading and listening! I appreciate each and every one of you.
The Daily Sip ko-fi membership is the only place to get Tarot every weekday, in addition to an ongoing shop discount. Tarot Table members get weekday Tarot, a shop discount and access to on request private email readings. Please visit the Sage Words Tarot Ko-fi page for details.
The name change from TaoCraft Tarot to Sage Words Tarot is almost finished. There are still a few new things on the horizon, so please follow the free blog for all of the latest. Links are in the episode description for podcast listeners
The Tarot week ahead in the time it takes to sip from your coffee
My, my. Aren’t we chatty again today.
Hello and welcome to the Sage Words Tarot blog and Sage’s Short Sip Tarot podcast. I’m glad you are here.
On Mondays, my hope is to do a Pathway Tarot reading for everyone, on all the platforms where you can find Sage Words Tarot. As always, it isn’t a hard core prediction. No Tarot or psychic reading ever is. As I see it this functions a lot like a weather forecast. It isn’t 100% definite most of the time (unless you hear the word “warning” which means it is already happening, so you should do something about it.) If you take a squinty-eyed look at what is probable, then you can be ready for the possibilities and opportunities that cross your path. It’s our mantra here: Tarot doesn’t tell you what is going to happen in life, it helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
The energy this week is quite a bit like last week. Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said that “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” That is true of hard science, social sciences, and folk art like Tarot. The universe is under no obligation to make one iota of sense and by the same token, it is under no obligation to move or change according to our hopes, aspirations, expectations or schedules.
If a regularly scheduled Tarot broadcast seems repetitive, it isn’t necessarily because the person doing the reading isn’t skilled or that the whole technique isn’t valid. The collective energies are what they are and under no obligation to keep us entertained.
We’ve had this “yeah it’s an annoying pain in the backside but you got this” energy around for a few weeks now. But compare that to 2020 when it was all mental images of hurricanes and a sense of Holy Duck stay focused on the practical problems at hand and batten down the hatches. The feel is totally different. This is feet up sipping coffee time by comparison.
Sometimes the energy changes within a matter of hours. Sometimes things shift over weeks or months. It varies from time to time – and certainly from person to person.
The energy seems fairly steady and low-key at the moment. I personally, will take that. I could use a little steady for a little while. So good news for me, but frustrating news for anyone who is feeling stuck, frustrated or impatient. Like I’ve said before relative to the Hanged Man card…one man’s stuck in the mud is another man’s day at the spa. It’s up to you to decide if the energy reads we get here are good or bad news for you personally.
One of the clue for me that we are still in a bit of the same groove is how chatty the cards are.
By chatty, I mean that the reading is more clairaudient than usual.
Clairvoyant means “clear sight” and refers to intuitive impressions that come in the form of mental images. I use the verb “see” to refer to those.
Clairaudient is that same intuition, just in the form of something sound-related like words or music. When those come along I use the word “hear.” Very seldom are the sounds actual sounds, although right now I’m getting the screeching tires and breaking glass sound effect from a don’t text and drive public service announcement just as an example of what that would be like.
Try putting THAT into words for a blog and podcast.
But back to chatty.
I’ve been getting more than the usual amount of word-driven intuition rather than mental image intuition the past couple of weeks as we begin the new pattern of things under the new name.
The change from TaoCraft Tarot to Sage Words Tarot is mostly finished, by the way.
When I do a private email Tarot reading, the first thing we’ll do is take a look at the general pattern of the cards on the table. This week is starting off with a bang and every single card in the layout is from the major arcana portion of the Tarot deck. I genuinely don’t see that often. I don’t know the math of it. Only 22 of the 78 Tarot cards are major arcana, but there is still some crazy big number of possible combinations in a three card reading….what is it? 78+77+76 to the power of three or some ridiculous thing? I don’t know the precise science-answer, but there are a LOT of possible combinations and only a portion of them include all major arcana cards. So the fact that this layout beat the odds and gave us all majors deserves attention and consideration.
Thinking about this pattern gives sort of a blurry double image, like opening your eyes under water. I am reminded of that old adage about being a duck in an emergency…calm on the surface but furiously paddling underneath.
All major arcana cards are a high energy, rapid change situation. That is in direct opposition to the sedate, steady feeling of the energy.
So how do we reconcile the seeming opposites?
I think the weird juxtaposition is a hint at timing. In the big picture and the overall pattern of things the theme of sedate and steady rules the week, but there may be small or short-lived little “KER-POWs” of energy.
There is an example of both clairvoyance and clairaudience at work. I ‘hear’ or ‘get’ the word KA-POW plus I also get a mental image of it as a cartoon or comic book image of the word, like during the fight scenes in the 1960s Batman TV show that in itself was a parody of even older comic books.
I also see a pebble thrown into a pond…a little splash in a big quiet surface.
I don’t think there is anything much under the surface. We might have to do a little ker-pow of duck paddling at some point this week, but it isn’t a major upset, just a little burst of speed to scoot out of the way of a minor disturbance.
At least on the outside. Here I get the impression that most of the major arcana action is going to be internal, in the spiritual or psychological realm of things, which would certainly fit the symbolism of the duck who seems to be gliding calmly on top but paddling like crazy with its feet under the smooth glassy surface of the water.
The first major arcana card we see is the Justice card. With that I hear “Be fair, including with yourself.” “You are part of the mix and deserve equal fairness with everyone.” This card is in the diminishing energies position within this particular layout, at which point I hear “Let It Go”…. in the form of the song from that Disney movie.
Which in turn reminds us to keep it light, keep your sense of humor, and don’t turn this week’s splash into more of a tidal wave than it really is.
In the current energy position we have the Strength card. This card feels like pure validation and reassurance. You got this. I get the mental image of a weight room or a gym. This is practice. This is a normal workout for your resilience and persistence. Be strong. Don’t whine. Do the do and you can get back to your calm and steady energies shortly.
The growing energy position belongs to the Fool. I see underlines…so this card is reinforcing the idea of lightness and humor. Keeping your sense of humor about things seems important this week.
The Fool card is also symbolic of new beginnings. Our chatty cards are giving me the “break on through to the other side” lyric from some old song from the Doors. Don’t ask me which one. I’m not THAT old. If it grabs your attention as something for you personally, then by all means google it or stream the song or something.
For our purposes, I think the “other side” is the other side of whatever stress or burst of energy this week brings. Be it next week, next month or next year, this feels like a reassurance that something good is available to us if we put a little effort into it.
It’s weird, but I see grass, and colored eggs on grass on the other side of clear plastic kitchen wrap. Good thing are waiting for us if we are fair to everyone and ourselves, stay strong and make the little effort of breaking on through to the greener grass on the other side of this week.
So stay calm but keep paddling my duckie friends!
Daily Sip members on ko-fi get Tarot every weekday (plus a standing shop discount) Tarot Table members get that plus a personal Sage’s Sip Tarot reading by email on request one per calendar month that they are an active member. People who follow the free blog on SageWordsTaot.com get exclusive weekend content, and the socials are whatever whenever although Instagram is the only one where I actually interact with the comments.
And that is the online week in a nutshell.
Or in a Tarot reading in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. See you at the next sip!
Sage Words Tarot 