How to Read Tarot to Wake-Up
“She’s a grown up witch now, and its time she learned how the world, the realms, really work.” — Zelda in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
My friend’s gray eyes flicked to me across the table, then cast down as she folded into the chair across from me. We were wedged into a nook in a dim bar in Leavenworth, Washington with 5 other folks huddled to our side. It was off hours on a work retreat, and folks wanted their cards read. Perhaps even more they wanted to witness their coworkers spill their guts during the reading.
I downed one rosemary vodka cocktail for the nerves of having an audience, but no more, since I needed to attune to my subject, and alcohol can create solipsism even in the best of us.
“Should I have a kid?” she asks.
I can’t answer that question. But I will attempt to provide her with the one thing I have come to count on tarot to be — a mirror to her own tender heart-of-the-moment. Liquored up and sober people alike tend to cry when faced with this, which must be what draws the crowd.
In response my question is:
What do you want to do?
We draw a card, discuss. It becomes clear that she doesn’t want a kid but feels distress about this, maybe shame.
What are you telling yourself that makes it not okay to follow your own heart?
I tend to avoid interpreting cards along the lines of “You shouldn’t have a baby due to this picture being an ill omen.” I also do not even attempt to tell the future. That isn’t to say there isn’t some measure of magic involved. Synchronicity has brushed up against me enough times over the years to persuade me of a mysteriously interconnected reality, softly palpable through the cards.
For example I have found myself saying “Wow, this is a literal picture of me right now. As in a woman in a floral dress reclining on a tufted cushion next to a river between a field of grass and some trees. Me.” I take it as a playful nudge from the spirit of Everythingness, saying, yep it’s all interwoven.
You don’t need to believe in magic or the divine to find value from tarot though. It may be simply archetypes, and as any good Jungian will tell you, the archetypes are all swirling around in our unconscious, so when we encounter them even at random, it can startle us into awareness.
That said, it helped me to have a little bit of info when I first started. If you are interested in tarot, these three steps are a path to begin.
- Look at the card.
- Ask wise questions.
- Know something about the cards (optional).
1. Look at the card.
You do not need any special knowledge to read tarot. When I was first learning to read tarot from Seven Star at the Seattle Tarot School, one of the first exercises we did was stare at one card for three hours. I drew the Page of Pentacles. It’s a dude in a floppy hat holding a a big coin. “Great,” I thought. “There is no way this can hold my attention for three hours.”
In turn I examined the foreground, background, colors, numbers, the figure’s posture, attitude and clothes, drawing associations with each observation. At the end I couldn’t believe three hours had passed.
It did become clear what this card might mean. This card now gives me Kylie Jenner vibes for example. Youthful feminine energy associated with the earth element of body and money. Celebrities famous for their bodies, clothes, and make-up fit right in.
If I drew this card in relationship with my career, it would be a reflection of my emotional attachment to the security and money that comes with working a corporate 9 to 5. The figure seems to almost worship that coin, appears relatively affluent but not rich, with a stripe of prideful dandy. I can relate to that. That archetype is a part of me, a part I let drive pretty often, for better or for worse. The mountains of “the hard path” are far in the background, yet still present, always an option.
If you draw a card that you are not sure how to interpret, the first step is relax. Your intuition doesn’t work well in panic mode. This is a tool for growth, so there is no wrong answer other than one that perpetuates your own suffering.
Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you’re left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
2) Ask wise questions.
The human mind tends to dwell on perceived problems, working them over and again in an attempt to “solve.” You can use that. The wound is the door. If I am reading for someone and they are not sure where to start, I ask “What is weighing on your heart that you want to explore?”
However the mind also has a tendency to use the cards to reinforce judgement on the self or others, or to attempt to engineer the outcome of the situation. We do enough of this in our day to day; exerting energy on judgment and control in your spiritual practice will not help, unfortunately. I wish it did; I would have ascended to another plane of existence by now.
Instead we can focus on unraveling what is driving us.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — Carl Jung
A friend of mine drew this Six of Stones with the question:
What should I do?
The situation was an impending long and unwelcome (by her) stay from a mother in law. Her partner had invited his mother to stay for 3 weeks. My friend wanted space and was considering staying elsewhere for a portion of that time. Her partner responded with accusations and anger. Deep down my friend believed these accusations. She believed she was selfish and that made her deeply bad, unlovable.
So when we drew the card she said
Wow its true. I am an exploiter. This older woman is vulnerable and I am exploiting her.
Let’s change the question. Let’s make it: “What am I telling myself about myself in this situation?” I interpreted the card thus:
You tell yourself you are an exploiter. All that you are trying to do is get some peace and space for your introvert self. This card is your fantasy, the judgement you wreak on yourself for holding boundaries. Alternatively, perhaps those hungry folks in the picture represent your own inner life, begging you to take care of them.
Same card, same situation. You can read it in a way that reinforces your learned trauma and judgment, or in a way that helps you see your patterns for what they are.
Here is a spread you can use to attempt to oust yourself from the tire tracks of your standard neural connections.
Card 1: My situation.
Card 2: How am I making this situation a problem.
Card 3: What am I telling myself about myself given this “problem.”
Card 4: What feeling can I open to in order to break the cycle and be here now.
3) Know something about the cards (optional).
As stated, you do not need to know anything (except maybe your own mind) in order to read tarot. Just look at the card. That said, it can enrich the experience and add to your credibility if you know something about the system.
The Major Arcana are the 22 cards not associated with a suit. The overall arc is a soul being born and progressing towards dissolution of the self and towards complete union with God/The Universe. Another tradition might call this Enlightenment.
Most tarot decks we interact with today are infused with symbolism from The Kabbalah, The Vedas, Astrology, and ideas filtered from North Africa through Greece, finally to Italy and France where the first decks were made. However the overt symbols of the older decks are as heavily Christian as the societies that dreamt them into being. The specifics go beyond my scope here but understand that it is a soul journey so the obstacles faced are mostly internal, like ego-death, addiction, choosing the spiritual path, etc.
With a little bit of knowledge of the Minor Arcana however, you can figure out at least one meaning to any of those 40 cards.
Water Suit: Represented by cups. Corresponds to emotion.
Fire Suit: Represented by wands. Corresponds to passion and action.
Air Suit: Represented by swords, arrows, or wind. Corresponds to thoughts and speech.
Earth Suit: Represented by pentacles, coins, or discs. Corresponds to earth, money, and the body.
For all four suits, cards one through ten represent a journey to awakening through that modality.
1- Something appears
2- You come into relationship with that something
3- Tension ensues
4- False stability
5- Loss of this stability
6- Maybe it’s okay
7- No its not; its really lost
8- Beginning the ascension, understanding, awareness
9- Understanding that situations do not create peace; you do
10- Arriving at surrender, joy, acceptance, or abundance depending on suit. In all cases you are no longer at war; you are in alignment with your true self.
This isn’t “how do I get my boyfriend to love me again?” or “How can I perform better at work?” This is how to come to peace with your situation and in so doing become capable of acting with love and authentic presence. I often know when I have found the right interpretation for myself because my shoulders drop about 2 inches.
When sitting across from someone in the taut few moments before I draw the first card, I sense their fidgeting, hear their fingers thrumming their jeans under the table. Mugwort and heather may be burning on a charcoal disc beside the cards. The scent reminds me with each inhale that I am here to Be Someone and Say Something Special. The lessons of the tarot remind me to forget that. I am here to surrender. I cannot control the cards that are drawn. That is precisely the point.
