Tarot is one of those tools that no one is neutral on. There are those who think it is a tool of demon worship, or at best superstition, and those who love it passionately. And there are those confused folks in between wondering what all the fuss is about. If you are one of those folks this article is for you.
I share here only my own experience using tarot as part of my personal growth and spiritual life. There are lots of people who use tarot in different ways which are no more or less valid than my way. If you use and love tarot differently in no way do I want to discourage you! But if you’ve wondered about how to incorporate tarot into your spiritual life as a regular practice this article will give you a basic overview. (Subscribe to my mailing list to be the first to know when my Introduction to Tarot as Spirituality course launches later this year for a much deeper dive!)
First of all, what is tarot? Very simply “tarot” is a deck of 78 cards composed of major and minor arcana (we’ll get into what those are that in the course). Tarot traces its origins back to an Italian card game (not a divination system) that slowly evolved into what we know today. The most famous and widely recognized tarot deck is probably the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck that was originally published in 1909. Many modern deck follow the RWS ordering and symbolism while giving their own spin on aesthetics and art. You don’t need any particular deck to use tarot for your spiritual practice, just a deck that you enjoy.
Card Meanings
When using tarot for spiritual practice you can follow your guidebook for card meanings, or ignore it entirely and dig into the artwork, its symbolism and meaning, as makes sense to you. If you discover a tarot system that makes great sense to you (for example Jessica Dore in Tarot for Change explores mental health through the symbolism of the tarot) you can use that system with whatever cards you like. I loveThe Gentle Tarot and Mari has written a beautiful guidebook for her deck that I find incredibly resinous. It is absolutely OK to use that guidebook with another deck as well, though all of the image descriptions may not match.
In this way of engaging with tarot there aren’t wrong answers. As you get to know tarot better you will get to know the archetypes depicted in the major arcana and you will have more and more life experiences that make sense with those depicted in the minor arcana. All of this will contextualize the cards and their meanings. You may find that some cards change meaning completely for you over the course of your life. Or some cards that once resonated don’t, or that didn’t resonate do in time. Remember that all meaning is contextual. What is true today may not be tomorrow.
That is to say, don’t worry overly about memorizing card meanings, or number meanings, or any particular system. This can sometimes be the first and biggest practice. We live in a society that teaches us there are right answers (often just one right answer) to everything and judges us based on how well we can regurgitate facts and figures.
But tarot doesn’t have a “right answer.” It is an infinite and endlessly changing system. Every time we shuffle the cards we create a whole new system. Each of us brings our own unique context of culture, religion, spirituality, symbolism, and history to those cards. So practice letting go of the need to know or to be right.
Prediction or Depth?
If you’ve watched just about any movie that includes a tarot deck you’ve probably seen it used to “predict the future.” Almost always this is a way of making fun of people who use tarot, often by also making fun of people like the Roma for whom divination practices are a closed cultural practice.
But when I talk about tarot for spiritual practice I am not talking about this kind of divination for a couple reasons. First because the way Roma and Traveller people use cards for divination isn’t a practice that those outside that group can practice without appropriation and that cultural appropriation is bad (for everyone). But also because tarot is so much more and always has been. If you want to use tarot as a predictive practice that’s fine, but you don’t have to. My own practice assumes that (per quantum physics) there’s no way to ask a question about the future without changing the future. Quantum physics tells us that there is no outside observer. We cannot observe events without impacting them. So even if tarot could (and perhaps it can) predict the future the very act of asking questions, pulling cards, and reflecting on those cards will mean the future has changed.
I find tarot far more interesting for depth work, that is for inner reflection. Tarot is perfect for this because the randomness (or maybe not so random) of shuffling. We can easily become self deceptive in journaling or prayer practices. Reinforcing our self-limiting beliefs, avoiding things we don’t want to face. But when you pull a tarot card you lose a bit of control. And I have found that often the cards we turn up are exactly the cards we need to face directly the things we’ve been avoiding or deceiving ourselves about.
This is especially helpful when combined with a therapy or spiritual direction relationship. Because when we pull cards with someone whose job is to help us go deeper we have that extra bit of help to not avoid or dodge what we’d rather not see.
Tarot & Existing Practices
Tarot itself is simply a tool. It can be used by itself, creating and pulling spreads to answer questions. But it is perhaps best used as a tool within our other spiritual practices.
Tarot works well with a journaling practice, it can be used to construct prayers or to guide prayerful listening to the Divine. It can be used for active imagination, meditation, art journaling and more. The ways a tarot deck can help and support other practices is deep and varied, and if you’d like to really dive into how to integrate your tarot practice into your regular spiritual life I encourage you to checkout the upcoming class (signup for my newsletter to be told when it drops this fall!)
