Advancing Tarot: it was about my present, not just my future
Finding Tarot
It has been a long time since I have thought to talk about tarot cards. They are a very personal thing to me, and somewhat of a remnant of my past.
Like a lot of 10 year old girls, I had developed a secret interest in spiritual things. Maybe anyone else who was active on Tumblr around 2014 can remember how big "witchblr" was. You may also remember that it was quite taboo. That is, it wasn't something you could mention to anyone outside the community without being mocked. And it was definitely not something your family could find out about.
It's been about 10 years now - I was 14 at the time - since my mum gifted me my Rider-Waite Tarot deck, followed by a book on herb usage and crystal symbolism.
This was of course a surprising but welcome gift. I had no money and owning a "real" divination tool was my dream. I had a rocky relationship with my mum, but this became a silent bonding between us. We never spoke of it aloud, but this secret acknowledgment of a shared interest was something I'll treasure for life.
I mostly don't care about herbs and spells and things like that anymore. It was never the part of the craft that interested me that much. Tarot has remained important to me though. I don't use the Rider-Waite specifically much anymore. I know it has it's issues but I stumbled upon a Thoth deck that has become almost like a friend to me. Through the years I have studied and found comfort with the art of tarot reading.
Learning Tarot
So I've had a few years to learn how tarot actually helps me. This is probably a good time to add a disclaimer that this is my personal view on the cards, and that other belief systems may say the opposite. So disregard if that applies to you. The single biggest thing I've had to learn is that these cards don't tell me much about my future at all. That part is on me. They tell me about the present and the past.
This is a view point I have seen fairly regularly in people who have read tarot for years so it may already be obvious to some already. But to newer readers, I hope this is useful information.
If you are in the beginnings of learning the cards, you may have already noticed that they tell a story. Multiple stories, actually, looking at the major arcana and the suits. We can see how it's natural it is in life to progress from the Four of Disks (with it's security and stability), to the Five of Disks (a fear of loss and the breakdown of the security we once had). This is a simplistic example, but it applies to whole deck.
And these stories incredibly cyclical. Yes, there is technically a start and an end card, but they loop back on themselves. Simply look at the major arcana and how beautifully the Universe/the World lends itself to returning to the Fool.
You can perhaps see what I'm going for already here. Similarly, if any of you have had any therapy or counselling, you may have had the experience of counselling cards. You know, where your counsellor makes you pick a card, it has a topic or question on it, and you use these theme to dictate the topic you are going to do a deep dive on today.
Tarot and the Future
Combining these, we have what tarot means to me. I pick a card, and allow myself to analyse my present in relation to the theme of the card. This in itself is valuable for assessing myself. But the real magic comes through how I know the story of tarot. Again using the example of the Four of Disks, I can predict that the next step for me is probably the Five of Disks.
I have told my future using only the power of knowing my present and the work of untold people in the past who have derived the stories of life.
Beginning and Understanding
The biggest turning point in my understanding of tarot came from the fact that I have to be truthful I'm getting from it. I had to come to terms with the fact that in pulling a card, I'm not reading directly what that card meant. I'm preparing for the story that comes with and ahead of it. It is uncomfortable to interrogate yourself in this way sometimes.
In a practical sense, this has helped me a lot. As a beginner, it is easy to fall into the trap of learning exactly what each card means. Of course this is important, but the next step of realising how the cards link together is not so obvious.
I've noticed beginners often fall into two traps:
Pulling a single card, taking it as a literal truth, and leaving it as that.
Pulling cards, reading them directly, and then pulling many "clarification" cards to try and get the whole truth.
In trap one this causes you to feel like your reading was inaccurate as you've missed so much context. In trap two, you end up with so much information from so many cards that it's hard to pinpoint how accurate your reading was.
I also had these issues. I believe that these things are partially caused by a misunderstanding of what I have explained above. They occur often when people miss the importance of the cards following on from the cards they have pulled. When you miss this, you realise you are missing a whole lot of depth to your reading. Your initially inaccurate card makes a whole lot more sense when you consider the context of it, and your need to pull clarification cards lessens as you learn to derive more from each card.
This is has become a bit wordy, but it is important to me. It took me way too long to be able to utilise this knowledge. If I can help even one person out there get fuller benefits from tarot, then I'll be happy.