For hundreds of years, the mystical tarot has fascinated people. It has a popular attraction far beyond any other kind of "divination", but why? Learn ins and outs of tarot, including its history, it use in psychology and spirituality, the meanings of each card, and how to conduct a tarot reading.
Of all the methods used through the ages to peer into the future, the tarot
remains one of the most fascinating. Supernaturalism aside, a tarot deck
contains strong symbolism that underlies humanity's fables, legends and dreams:
dramatic images that evoke our primal emotions. Working with tarot can reveal
answers to challenging problems, answers hidden in plain view. Bold claims,
indeed! So, you ask - what is the tarot? Where did it come from? What makes it
special; so much so that it is used by some psychologists? What does it all
mean and how does one use it? In this guide, I will explain this and more. You
will learn to navigate a tarot deck and give yourself a basic reading.
A brief history of the tarot
In its basic form, tarot originated in Italy
during the Renaissance. Historical records first point to a game called
Triumphs that was played with a deck of cards bearing the four suits of modern
tarot pip cards. Though the rules of this game have been lost, we know that it
was in vogue among aristocrats, who commissioned artists to make beautiful
decks. There were also numerous court cards similar to the modern versions. The
cards we know as Major Arcana, which depict such concepts as Judgment and
Justice, had not yet appeared.
Tarot was introduced next to Germany,
and pops up in various European locales throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. In the 1700s, French occultists began to seek out correspondences
between the figures of the tarot, astrology, and other subtle forces believed
to exist in the universe. However, history is mostly silent on further changes
in the tarot until 1800s.
In the 1800s, an English organization expanded upon and popularized the use
of tarot as a decision-making tool. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was
an association of philosophers and mystics who created a vast system of
self-improvement based on esoteric Hebrew and Greek teachings. Two members developed
a new deck that incorporated symbolism from ancient lore. With bold colors and
striking, antique-style designs, their Rider-Waite deck is still one of the
most widely used.
In the 1900s, psychologist Carl Jung was the first mainstream academic to
recognize the use of tarot for self-discovery and mental health. Jung felt that
the individual cards represented archetypes, universal symbols that are
so common to human experience that anyone can relate to their meaning. Whereas
the Golden Dawn associated the pip cards with the mystic qualities of earth,
wind, water and fire, Jung associated them with sensation, thinking, feeling
and intuition.
In the modern era, tarot has been popularized thanks to New Age and
neo-pagan religious movements, depictions on television and in novels, and so
on. Though many people look at tarot as a superstitious or deceitful practice,
more genuine students of tarot are practicing now than ever before, and there
are several respectable professional organizations for tarot readers throughout
the United States.
The composition of a tarot deck
A tarot deck is comprised of sixteen court cards, forty pip cards
("minor arcana") and twenty-one cards with special importance and
meanings ("major arcana") for a total of seventy-seven cards. Each of
these cards has their own value in a tarot reading.
Minor Arcana
Minor arcana cards each fall into one of four suits - wands, cups, swords or
pentacles. Wand cards are associated with matters of creativity, cups with
emotion and intuition, swords with intellect, and pentacles with physical
well-being and prosperity. Each card has an individual meaning depicted by the
art on its face. In general, the meanings can only be mastered through
memorization. Ace cards depict new opportunities in one of the four realms, and
the ten cards depict the culmination of a cycle in the creative, intellectual,
emotional or material realm.
Major Arcana
Major Arcana cards depict twenty-one essential lessons that we each must
learn to make the most of our lives. They are traditionally read as a narrative
of adventure that begins with The Fool, symbolizing the beginning of a journey,
and ends with The World, which announces a harmonic, enlightened and fulfilled
state of being. The rest of the cards can be experienced in any order, and some
spiritual individuals claim that it may take many lifetimes to learn the
intricacies of each.
Where the Minor Arcana cards are more concerned with everyday life, Major
Arcana cards deal with life-changing challenges and decisions. Also, new
students of the tarot often find Major Arcana cards easier to learn and
remember, because their names and artistry call their meaning to the mind more
easily than the other cards.
Court Cards
The four court cards are divided into Kings, Queens,
Knights and Pages. Your deck may call the latter two Princes and Princesses, or
some equivalent title. The meaning remains the same. Knights and Pages
represent new, vital, but undeveloped and unbalanced masculine and feminine
energies. Kings and Queens represent mature, balanced,
optimal masculine and feminine energies. Each suit has a set of all four court
cards, and these together represent the full range of development for the
traits the suits represent.
How to read tarot
Before I cover what individual cards mean, I'd like to mention exactly how a
tarot reading is done. To produce a reading, the person for whom the reading is
given must first concentrate on a question. He or she shuffles the deck and
draws a specific number of cards, which are laid out in a specific pattern,
called a spread. Before drawing each card, the deck should be shuffled
until it "feels" like time to stop, and once stopped; the top card
should be drawn.
The tarot spread helps put a reading in context - it narrows down a reading
to deal with a specific kind of problem, and determines what aspect of the
problem or query each card relates to. The best way to explain this would be
with an example, the Horseshoe Spread, which is widely used. It is thorough,
but still simple enough so that a beginning tarot user should not be
overwhelmed.
The Horseshoe Spread consists of seven cards, which are arranged in a line
with each of the first four cards set slightly higher than the last, and each
of the last three cards set slightly lower than the last, to form a horseshoe
pattern. Arranging them in a distinct pattern is said to heighten the reader's
concentration, and lends a mystical element that separates a reading from
mundane, everyday tasks.
From left to right, the cards take on the following meanings:
Past: This card
reveals the most important past influence, person, or event that caused
the current situation. Because situations in our past often don't receive
emotional closure or a sense of completeness, this card indicates
something that still influences the questioner in the present.
Present: This card
reveals the situation as it is now.
Hopes and Fears: This
card represents the questioner's hopes and fears, or unconscious
motivations. It is often through confronting the expectations revealed by
this card that a questioner can rid him or herself of preconceptions that
keep the situation from improving.
Obstacles: Of all the
cards, this is the one that speaks most to direct action. In order to
improve the situation, the questioner must confront the influences shown
in the Obstacles card. This card may indicate another person, a decision,
the questioner's own internal state, or something else.
Environment: This card
tells of the attitude and behavior of other people in the situation. It
can be either positive or negative. If positive, it indicates an asset the
questioner has for dealing with Card 4. If negative, it may indicate a
smaller problem the questioner should deal with before facing the larger
one in Card 4.
Future: The Future
card indicates an asset for dealing with the current situation that will
soon reveal itself. The questioner should examine their life and be on the
lookout for an influence such as the one indicated here.
Outcome: The Outcome
card indicates that which is at stake, namely, what the questioner has to
gain by solving the problem. This may seem obvious at times: if you are
taking action to repair a relationship, get a new job, and so on, the
cards may indicate that. However, there is often a spiritual lesson
revealed in hardship, which will allow you to deal more easily with
similar situations in the future. The Outcome card can often only be
interpreted after the fact.
There are numerous spreads, and it is up to the tarot reader to select the
one that addresses the problem being dealt with most effectively. As a tarot
user gains confidence, they will no doubt create their own spreads. Spreads can
be as simple as one card (for a "yes or no" answer) or may even use
every card in a single deck! There are no hard and fast rules for spread
design, so long as the spread addresses some aspect of a problem or question.
Card Meanings
An exhaustive account of the meaning of each tarot card and how they relate
to one another is beyond the scope of this article. However, I can provide a
basic sketch of the most essential meaning of each card as a basis for further
study.
Major Arcana
The Fool: Beginnings; a
journey; spontaneity; travel; following one's own path.
The Magician: Willpower,
intellect; natural talents; manifestation of desires.
The High Priestess:
Intuition; compassion; spirituality; seeing hidden truth.
The Empress: Nurturing;
mothering; abundance; generosity.
The Emperor: Authority,
fathering, structure, rules.
The Hierophant: Belonging in
a group; higher education; organizations; religion.
The Lovers: Life decisions;
weighing the value of each option.
The Chariot: Conflict;
confidence; energy; forcefulness.
Justice: Achieving balance,
righting past wrongs.
The Hermit: Solitude;
contemplation; introversion; analysis.
Wheel of Fortune: Unexpected
changes; travel; chaos; good fortune.
Strength: Compassion;
benevolence; influence through kindness.
Hanged Man: Sacrifice;
challenge; loss; investment of time and energy.
Death: Rebirth, new
beginnings, inevitable change; moving on; growing pains.
Temperance: Balance, harmony,
health, diplomacy.
The Devil: Greed,
restriction; bondage; materialism; sensuality.
A "reversed" card can be, literally, a card that is drawn upside
down, or can it be a card whose place in a spread suggests it is a negative
influence. In either case, the reverse card is most often interpreted as the
opposite of its original meaning. For the few cards that have an inherently
negative meaning, the reversed cards suggest freedom from or triumph over the
negative influence. For the court cards, a reverse card is the unhealthy
extreme of the traits the card already has; for example, the confident Prince
of Wands is brash and foolhardy when reversed.
While some card readers do not make use of reversed cards, I would not
suggest it. Doing so simplifies the cards a great deal, and makes it difficult
to pinpoint challenges that a reading would otherwise discuss.
Clarifications
Sometimes, no matter how precise your spread or clear your understanding of
a card's meaning, something you draw does not make sense. I suggest completing
your reading and then drawing an additional card to clarify the difficult one.
Relate the meaning of the difficult card to that of the new one. If the first
card speaks of an influence, the second card may tell you where it came from;
if the first card refers to a person, this card will give you a clue to their
identity. It is possible to draw another card to clarify the clarifying card.
However, if you draw more than two, you run a serious risk of making the
situation more confusing than it was to begin with!
Tips for a Successful Reading
Storytelling: In
addition to memorizing the meanings and positions of cards, a successful
tarot reader must learn to weave a narrative from what the cards indicate.
Like a storyteller, he or she must find ways to relate the contents of
each card so that they make a cohesive, unified whole relevant to the
questioner. The cards must be given the meaning that makes the most sense
in the context of all the other cards. This requires practice.
Detachment: Often, it
is easier to begin reading with someone you know, then graduate to doing
your own detailed readings, and only then move on to others you know less
intimately. The reason I suggest practicing with close friends first is
because often, as learners, impatience creeps in and it becomes difficult
to read what the cards say, rather than what we desire them to say.
Compassion: Empathy
and understanding are useful skills for a tarot reader, and asking
questions such as if each card makes sense or if any require clarification
can help to create an honest assessment of the cards. Some would
characterize this as "cheating", but this is not the case. This
segues nicely into the fourth trait, which is ...
Honesty: One must
retain a realistic view of the world and their place in it when one
dabbles in the cards. If one is skilled, it is easy to become dependent or
fixated on tarot use because of the insight it provides. Bear in mind,
there is no means of "seeing the future" I know of that is 100%
accurate. Rather, the cards should be viewed as a means of self-discovery
and self-improvement. It is not possible to use them to accurately predict
the color of a stranger's car, the winning lottery numbers in Massachusetts
next week, ad nauseam.
Tarot Meditation: Integrate the Tarot into your Life
After obtaining a passing familiarity with tarot, many readers look for a
way to make the meaning of individual cards more natural to them. One way to do
this is with a tarot meditation. Learning how to meditate is outside the scope
of this article - you can find several other pieces that address this,
including one of my own, on Finetuning. However, if you are familiar with
meditation, this can be used in tandem with tarot to make the deck's meanings
more "real".
For a tarot meditation,
remove the minor arcana from your deck and shuffle the remaining major
arcana and court cards. Draw a single card when you feel ready. Spend five
to ten minutes with your eyes closed, focusing your thoughts on the
meaning of that card. For the rest of the day, make the card a part of
your life - look for its influence around you, and try to approach
challenging situations from the perspective of one who has mastered the
"lesson" of the card.
If you are still unclear on
the meaning or use of the card you drew, keep it with you that day along
with a slip of paper that breaks down the meaning in a few words.
At the end of the day, record
any observations you have about the card. Did using it change your
behavior? Do you feel any new understanding of that card? Continue using
whichever card you drew until you begin to glean more insight from it.
Once you begin to see how the
cards can act as "frames" for thought and behavior, it will be
easier to remember each card and to relate them to others when you do
readings. This can truly bring a new dimension to tarot reading both for
you and those you read for.
A final word on tarot reading
Tarot reading is more an art than a science, and flourishes on the
imagination and quick thinking of the reader. Learning to understand and use
the cards can only be accomplished through practice. A good reader is an apt
storyteller and trustworthy counselor, and has the same responsibility to those
who seek their aid as any other spiritual adviser. Tarot's formerly tawdry
reputation is cleaning up in many places, and there are several levels of
certification for tarot readers through various professional organizations, if
one should choose to pursue tarot as a source of income. Whatever you choose to
do with your new skill, I hope you find it as enlightening and helpful as I
have.