Tag: tarot

Tarot: Day to Day

Does your tarot deck collect more dust than fingerprints? I know some of mine do at times—and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But when you’re looking to integrate more tarot into your daily life, whether you just purchased your first deck, have had your deck for years, or have multiple decks lying around, here are some easy ways to do this.

Starting Simple

For those who are thinking about getting into a regular tarot practice but do not already have one, my advice is to keep it simple. Drawing cards does not have to be some elaborate process involving ritual candles and circle casting (although it could). Doing tarot does not need to be complicated. It doesn’t even have to consume a lot of time. It is just a matter of doing and doing what feels right to you.

If you’ve got a super busy life, maybe you’re drawing a card on your app in the parking lot during the three minutes of downtime you have before you have to get to your next activity. Or perhaps you find yourself winding down at night with your favorite show and are muting commercials to draw cards. Whatever your method, as long as you have one, that’s great.

When free time is a scarce commodity, one easy way to sprinkle your day with tarot is to do a weekly reading at the start of each week. I like doing a spread for the week ahead, which was suggested in The Witches Tarot. This eight-card spread has one card representing every day of the week and one card for the week in general. For the layout, I place the seven cards for each day of the week in a row and the general week card above the others.

What makes this spread great is that it gives you the opportunity to commit to the tarot every day without having to do a spread every day. Throughout the week, you can analyze how the card for that day showed up and how it was influenced by the theme of the week as represented by the weekly overview card.

Diving Deeper

For those who are ready to take their practice a step further, a daily reading can be very rewarding. For the day’s reading, I like to do a three-card spread consisting of body, mind, and spirit. I ask the tarot how best I can nurture, support, and care for each of these elements of myself that day.

Another method for doing a three-card reading is assigning morning, noon, and night to the three positions. A good way to phrase this question would be, what will help me best navigate my day? Use whatever spread works best for you. Try a few different ones on for fit. Take what works. Leave what doesn’t.

Generally, I like to draw cards in the morning. I’m also a morning person and get up early so I have lots of time for myself before having to focus my attention on other things. If you’re not a morning person, try drawing cards at night for the following day. Do what works best for your schedule.

Consulting the cards daily not only helps you get into a regular, dedicated practice, but it also gives you an opportunity to get to know and work with the cards more. I consider myself a lifelong student of tarot and am always learning. These daily and weekly readings deepen my relationship with each deck and tarot as a system.

Use Reminders

Visual reminders help us check in throughout the day. I like to place my cards out on my altar where I see them every day. Another thing I like to do for a reminder is to take a screenshot of the reading and save it as my home screen. That way I see the cards every time I use my phone.

Keeping a journal of your readings is also very helpful. It gives you a written record to use as reference later. A basic entry would have information on the spread, interpretations, and anything else you found relevant during the reading. You could also get more detailed and include the sun and moon signs for the day, other astrological influences, and anything else that was significant, like your mood, the weather, etc.

Tarot It Up

If you feel called or inspired to get more hands-on time with your deck(s), consider this your green light and go for it. Perhaps you want to combine some of the suggestions I offered, like a three-card body-mind-spirit reading for the week instead of every day. If you’re not sure, experiment and play around. Eventually you’ll figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.

Happy taroting everybody!

Joys and Blessings,

Violet

The Bridge Between Worlds

Blessed 2021 to Everyone!

I don’t think I can remember another year where people were so happy to move on. And yet, we have several challenges facing us in 2021. Still, the attitude seems different. We’re not going to be blindsided by a world-changing pandemic this year; no that was last year. But we are still dealing with the pandemic and have a long way to go before it will be over. Nonetheless, progress is being made.

As we look back at 2020, I think we will have learned many lessons. We, as a species, are quick to adapt our lifestyles and habits. We can invent new ways of being social and running our businesses. The silver lining to last year: The environment benefited tremendously from the ramifications of the human species dealing with a global pandemic. Reduced commerce and reduced traffic (whether by air, land, or sea) means less stress on the environment and all its lifeforms.

2021—The Year of the Hierophant

The collective tarot card for this year is card V of the major arcana, The Hierophant (2021 → 2 + 0 + 2 +1 = 5). The Hierophant in its highest aspects signifies social structure, community, the benefits of religion, a connection between the material and the spiritual, teachings and lessons, and societal values. The shadow side of the Hierophant can be abuse in the name of religion, indoctrination for egotistical aims, fanatic cults, and extremism.

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is full of religious imagery. Personally, I’m not a catholic, so at first, I had a hard time connecting with this card. That is why my favorite versions of this card are depictions of a tree. In many ways, the tree and the pope have several things in common. From my understanding of the catholic faith, the pope is the people’s connection to god. The congregation speaks to god through the pope and listens to god’s message from the pope’s mouth. This is very much like a tree. A tree takes the nutrients and water from the lowly soil and brings it up to the heavens where it produces delicious fruits, and a tree shelters us from the harsh blinding light and heat of the sun by providing us with shade.

Also, the tree as an image is central to many religions. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil leads to the Fall (the introduction of sin) in Christian faiths. The Norse called their tree of life Yggdrasil. The Qabalah is the tree of life that stems from Judaism and has been adopted by many esoteric practices, as well as Christian mysticism. (The Qabalah is also a central theme in tarot, but that is a topic for another time.) The Assyrians in ancient Mesopotamia had a tree of life, and Islam has a Tree of Immortality.

Trees can also grow to become very old. Some can live for over 5,000 years. Trees store information too, the most obvious example being in their rings. Just think about all the knowledge one could accumulate in the amount of time tress live! Trees really are ancient sources of wisdom. And trees also form a great branching network. Their roots are connected by mycelium, or fungi. The mycelial networks allow trees to communicate with other trees in the forest.

Lastly, here’s one way to think about the number Five. Once we have made it to the material world of the Four and have become manifest, we have established the point of reference, the point of origin. From there, we can take it to the next level and go somewhere, somewhere grander, reach for the skies.

In 2021, I invite you to take a journey with me in honor of the Hierophant. This year provides us an excellent opportunity to reexamine our belief structures by answering questions like what are my beliefs and how did I come to them. We will also be called upon to strengthen our personal connection with the spiritual aspects of life. One of the ways I will be doing this is to spend time cultivating my relationship with trees and plants, which means simply spending more time with plants and becoming more aware of their presence in my life. We live on such a beautiful planet, and I find that connecting with nature is one of the easiest ways to experience the sacred in the world we belong to.

Happy Tree Hugging to You All!

Many Blessings,

Violet

Topsy-Turvy

To reverse or not to reverse? That is the question.

Once we’ve acquired an understanding of the basic meaning of the cards, the next thing we ask ourselves is whether or not to use reversals in our readings. When reversals get to be too disruptive and interfere with our work, it is best not to use them. When they are used, reversals can, however, enrich our readings with additional information. Reversals offer us a different way of looking at the card’s influence in the situation. Upside-down cards let us know at a glance that something is blocking the full potential of the upright energy, hindering the flow in the natural direction, altering slightly the meaning of the upright interpretation.

Arguably the most important thing we can do as tarot readers is to take a moment to center and ground before any reading. The way we choose to take this moment of silence differs for everyone. In my practice, I will always do a simple meditation holding the cards before starting to shuffle. Sometimes I also light a candle, do a banishing spell, and set up a formal ritual space. Taking time for stillness at the beginning of the readings helps us calm the active mind. When we tap into the right-hemisphere traits and tell the left-hemisphere ones to hush, intuitiveness flourishes.

Reversals can seem tricky at first, but there is some method to their madness. It helps me to think of reversals like this: If the upright card were like seeing with standard vision, the reversal would be like looking at the card through filtered lenses of various colors, or maybe a magnifying glass or a kaleidoscope.

So how do we know when we should be using the blue-colored lenses instead of yellow ones? It’s all a matter of perception. We have to know ourselves well enough to trust our gut instinct. The goal is not to force a meaning to come forth, but to let the essence being expressed flow up from the subconscious so that our receptive minds can transform the message into an intelligible statement for the left brain.

In other words, we allow our more creative right brain to take us on that path through the forest of the imagination, imagination in the sense of brainstorming (not fantasy or make-believe). When we do this, we open our mind up to being receptive instead of productive. We won’t have to ask, which lenses to use, that is, which method to apply, but we will already know instinctively whether we’re using the rosy-colored ones or the green ones. We hone instinct by listening without judgement or interjection to what comes up. If interpretations don’t come easily at first, don’t be discouraged. The more practice, the easier this becomes.

Here are some of the many lenses that can be applied to reading reversals. The most obvious meaning for reversals is the flat-out opposite of the upright meaning (but we should take caution to prevent this interpretation from becoming the default). Several or a majority of reversals in a reading could signify that internal processes are more applicable to the situation than external ones. Reversals could also simply indicate that the influence of the card will not be as strong or as pervasive as it would be if upright, or on the opposite end of that spectrum, the influence is stronger than otherwise. And yet in other cases, reversals could signify that timing will be delayed.

Let’s apply some of these lenses and look at our collective card for 2020, The Emperor (covered in last week’s post). In his upright aspects, The Emperor can represent someone who has a good solid grip on life, is a good leader, has things under control, or is an honorable father or authority figure. So, the Emperor reversed could mean that someone does not have their grip on reality, that things are not in control. There could be problems with a father figure or people in positions of authority. The Emperor reversed could also indicate a tyrant, a dictator, or someone who is abusing a position of power. Or maybe the answers will be found on the inside instead of in the external world, which in the case of the Emperor means focusing on our own relationships with the themes of ruling, discipline, order, structure, and stability in our lives. Lastly, The Emperor reversed could also be telling us that the security and protection will come, just later rather than sooner.

If you have never worked with reversals before, I hope this explanation will have given you new ways of looking at them. Try on as many lenses as possible. Maybe reversals will work for you, maybe they won’t. Remember to listen to your intuition. Your intuition is honest and will guide you to knowing which methods work and which don’t. Be open to the ideas that come up. Follow what feels right. Maybe some colors, symbols, or aspects of the card will stand out in ways never noticed before. On the flip side, you may even discover some new lenses of your own.

Happy taroting!

Violet