People hold a big misconception with tarot cards- that they are only used for fatalistic fortune-telling.
I actually had this come up with a client a few nights ago. He was terrified to do a reading because of possible scary predictions that might come up.
I’d like to offer a different perspective because I’ve found there are 3 much more alive, magical, and effective ways to use the tarot!
The tarot can be used to assist you with creativity, meditation, and free will.
The tarot is a creative thinking prompt. Just as creative writing prompts are used to help writers get more creative, and brainstorming sessions are used in business and marketing to spark new ideas, tarot cards can be used in the same way.
It works based on a phenomena called Conceptual Blending (tarot reader Vincent Pitisci talks about this a lot), which is taught in psychology/ creative thinking classes and it means that you introduce randomness to a fixed idea. From this ‘blending’ new associations have to be made, from which brand new amazing ideas are born.
The tarot works in the same way because it requires random cards to be drawn and placed in fixed positions, which forces creativity.
Since creativity thrives on foundation, the more knowledge, years of experience, and intimacy the tarot reader has with their cards, the more vibrant and interesting their interpretation will be. And the better the chances are of you buying into what they have to say.
Another way tarot lets us be creative is with symbolism- tarot cards are filled with it! There are whole systems of tarot that you can study over many years and learn how to put the symbols together not only in one card, but between many cards. It starts to be a fun game of never-ending poems, sentences, and stories that your deck can tell! If you’d like to explore this further I highly recommend checking out the movie Tarology on Prime video.
The tarot is a meditation tool. I look at a pack of tarot cards as a pack of 78 meditations. Each one full of unique colors that correspond to different chakras in the energy body, and it has a message and symbols, making it a powerful visual aid for contemplation.
Meditation, essentially means awareness of what our mind is doing. Generating such awareness of our mind that we begin to lovingly be able to manage our thoughts, manage our behavior patterns, and gracefully change any stories within that don’t serve us.
Many tarot readers do what’s called ‘tarot pathwork’ or ‘reverse divination’ where they choose a card they want to meditate with and then they astral project into the card, going on a sort of shamanic journey or vision quest where they enter into the card and become the character, start to see what’s on the card 3-dimensionally around them, and start to use their five senses to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch what’s around them in that space. I’ve tried it a few times and found it to be a very effective meditation practice that leaves me feeling centered, relaxed, and a bit magical.
Tarot is all about free will– we can use it for manifestation practice! In my opinion, this doesn’t mean expecting the Universe to meet your preferences, but it means choosing a card or a spread to better clarify to you how you can work WITH the Universe, WITH Unconditional Love, WITH Divine Guidance to have your sincere longings met. Manifestation is long game, but there can be quantum leaps too 🙂
A powerful way to start is to make sure you frame your questions to the tarot as ‘how’ or ‘what’ questions. Stay away from ‘should I’ or ‘will I’ types of questions, as those just get the rational mind all jacked up which is a waste of energy.
The most surprising and ironic way the tarot teaches us about free will is through one of its Major Arcana cards: The Wheel of Fortune card.
The Wheel of Fortune card indicates that things are always moving…that change is the only constant in life. There are all kinds of wonderful and shitty experiences available to us on this wheel, and we’re not sure when it will be our turn to experience which.
Now…if you have a ‘fate’ mindset you’ll let the wheel decide your inner state. When things are going good you ride the top, feeling ecstatic and joyful. When things are bad you’re on the bottom getting crushed by the wheel.
But if you have a ‘free will’ mindset you become the center of the wheel! You still engage with the highs and lows but you don’t identify with them.
From the center, you can see that things will come to pass soon enough. You become detached from ideas of the future or past, and you become skilled at staying present to what’s alive right there in front of you in moment to moment living. You start to be intimate with reality.
So the secret to the Wheel of Fortune card is that we always have free will to choose how to respond to life’s changes, and the trick is locating our center.
I hope you find lots of magick, new ideas, and inspiration with your tarot deck using it for creativity, meditation, and free will!
Thanks for reading! I’m a tarot reader and meditation practitioner with a psychology and library science degree. Here are some ways you can work with me:
Join Moon Aligned Path (MAP) a program where I help people chart a course to their sacred YES and NO, help them activate spiritual breakthroughs, and give them tools to access more self-compassion and self-worth.
Book a spiritual coaching session with me– I create personally tailored rituals and draw on 20 years of experience practicing meditation from several different lineages, classical tantra and yoga teacher certifications, and a pilgrimage to India.