Welcome to the blog!
The Fool takes that first step and the journey begins. Whether you are at the beginning of your tarot journey or are fluent in the language of the tarot, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t interested. So let’s talk tarot!!
Those who are just starting out probably know by now that the tarot is a deck of 78 illustrated cards. The tarot has many uses. It can be a tool for divination, for telling the future, for unveiling the secrets of the unknown. It can also be used for spell work and for self-realization. The common denominator in all of these applications is that they are explorative. When we want to learn more about something we do not understand, we can turn to the cards for guidance. And the amazing thing about them is they seem to tell you exactly what you need to hear (not what you want to hear) by capturing the human experience in 78 images. All the processes that make up life are wrapped up into one neat package.
But how does the tarot work? The real secret to the tarot is its ability to communicate with our subconscious. The subconscious does not transmit messages like our conscious minds do, that is through words. Instead it communicates through symbols, subjective images that can be interpreted in different ways depending on perspective. Tarot is not supposed to be an exact science that gives us absolutes, telling us without a doubt that something is true or false. In tarot, there is no one right or wrong answer. By nature, tarot itself is subjective. The cards paint a picture and our imaginations, which are tied to intuition, help us fill in the words to the story.
Imaginations are usually cherished when we are young, but discouraged the older we get, when we should be putting our brain power to more practical things instead of flights of fancy. As adults, imaginations have much more to offer than we give them credit for. Imaginations are fathered by our experiences and born from the depths of our souls, from our subconscious. We could even say that the tarot cards give us a safe place to explore our imagination as adults. We do not need to be ashamed of our imagination, for it unlocks a door to intuition.
In its most primitive sense, intuition is that fight-or-flight response we encounter when we are faced with danger. It is the instinct that informs us what to do. It is the inner voice that we knew we should have listened to but may not have. Like any muscle in our body, intuition can be developed with exercise and patience. When we listen to our intuition, we tap into the subconscious. When the ego, or the conscious mind tries to suppress the subconscious, tension will build until something snaps, which can end up in disaster. By acknowledging our subconscious desires, regardless of any decision to act on them or not, we are able to release some of the psychic steam before the growing pressure creates an explosion down the road. The tarot is the vent, the mechanism that gives us the power to strengthen our intuition by opening up communication between our conscious self and our subconscious self.
When it comes to the 78 individual cards, a picture is worth a thousand words and then some! There is so much to say about each of the 78 images in the deck, encyclopedias could be written on the tarot. Speaking the language of tarot requires having an understanding of what each of the cards mean. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now with the task of having to memorize 78 different meanings, don’t panic. Learning tarot is easier than you may think. At the most basic level, the pictures speak for themselves.
To make matters slightly more complicated, there are also many systems that can be superimposed on the tarot, including numerology, astrology, elemental dignities, the qabalah, and the Hebrew alphabet, just to name a few. While these aspects may help shape our understanding of tarot, they are not essential to learning tarot. We can think of them more as dialects in the tarot language rather than the heart of the language itself.
Like language, tarot is constantly evolving—and so are we. While the classic images of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck may no longer reflect daily life in 2020, the archetypes they represent still do. The RWS deck is widely recommended for beginners. If these images do not speak to you, however, there are as many different versions of the tarot as there are stars in the sky—okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. There are multitudes of decks to choose from. If you don’t already own one, find a deck that you are attracted to or make one yourself. Use your intuition to help you decide what feels right.
Here’s to a great learning experience with this mind-blowing, centuries-old system. Off that cliff and into the unknown we go.
Cheers!
Violet