Tarot cards provide us with a cast of characters through the court Cards, a cast of Soul Selves through the Major Arcana cards, and a structure for understanding how those players interact with the world on the earthbound stage of the elements: earth, air, fire and water (the Minor Mentors). As a whole, the deck makes up a series of linked images and people relating to other people, their own souls, and the world around them.
When we come to the cards curious, willing, and open to learning more about ourselves no matter which part of the rainbow of human emotions we are experiencing, we can use the cards to compassionately help us see how we are thinking or feeling about situations and quandaries facing us in order to arrive at solutions we might not otherwise consider.
Two powerful ways that Tarot Study and seeking come more deeply into focus occur when:
1) …we engage in conversation with others studying the Tarot with equal joy and enthusiasm. We have the opportunity to become pattern seekers, truth gleaners, and self-healers. Doing this work in the company of others gives us the benefit of multiple points of view and more importantly, the blessing of love and support we sometimes withhold from ourselves; we tend to be our own worst critics.
2) ….we converse with ourselves privately through journaling or writing to prompts. Writing distills the more evaporative medium of conversation into a tangible, recorded journey we can return to again and again in order to see our patterns and our growth.
Tarot for Two and Tarot Tuesdays
Since January of 2015, writer Mary Allen and I have blogged at Tarot for Two. Though we have been reading Tarot cards and playing together for years, we decided to deepen our study by committing to writing to our cards of the month, a practice we started back in 2011. Tarot for Two was yet another way we could deepen our study and simultaneously share our practice with more Tarot enthusisasts. It is our hope that we inspire more pairs of friends to walk the Royal Road together. Linking our lived events to our cards of the month has been a beautiful practice and is something I look forward to every month. Here are a few links you might enjoy:
How Mary and I met and began to Play with Tarot: Introductions
and our current post:
The Chariot and Queen of Swords
If you are more of a lone querent at the moment, going it alone, or even if you are working with friends and others, you can journal your way through the deck; each deck has its own workbook in many cases. But if you don’t have a workbook, stop by my Tarot Tuesday Facebook Page or my main site for Tarot Tuesday. I’m working through the entire deck, one card at a time, and posting a writing prompt for you to use. Here’s a prompt for the Five of Wands from this week:
Tarot Tuesday: Glastonbury Tor and a Five or Wands Writing Prompt
Wheel of Archetypal Selves: The Deck Makers Series, Course 1
If you are looking to step up your commitment to working with the Tarot, consider my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Tarot Deck Makers Course (open to all level of Tarot student and art experience). We will be making our own Tarot inspired Vision Decks. During this class, you will begin to fill in your own written Tarot Map of stories you’ve lived and ways you’ve embodied or encountered people or scenes depicted in the cards. No two Tarot Maps are the same. Nor will any two Tarot inspired Vision decks that we create be the same.
I welcome you to explore your symbol world in any medium you feel drawn to trying (or even more than one medium if you wish). I invite you to bring your curious, pattern seeking, truth gleaning self. And I promise to bring guidance, compassion and fierce listening. If you’ve worked with me before, you know that I listen for the stories hiding beneath the stories. I will always urge you to write, play, and lean more deeply into the part of you that knows more than you realize in order to bring you more joy and agency.
We start this coming Monday, September 12, 2016 (three spots left). For more information about the course and to sign up, visit the course description:
Calling all Lovers of Tarot: Are You Ready to Make Your Own Deck?
Photos in this post are by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie.
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