When You Feel Disconnected from Your Tarot Cards

When You Feel Disconnected from Your Tarot Cards

The biggest complaint I hear from newer tarot students is that they just don’t feel like they are ‘connecting’ to their tarot cards. I see this problem every day in tarot groups on social media. Sometimes it is a tarot deck, or a specific card, to which a person is having a hard time feeling connected. Sometimes the frustrated tarotist explains that a week ago, or a month ago, they were feeling very connected, and getting great readings with the deck, and now, suddenly, they are not.

Often this phenomenon leads to a tarot student feeling badly about themselves. Sometimes they spiritualize the problem to the point that they feel like the cards are punishing them by refusing to speak with them. Worse, students will sometimes use this perceived lack of connection to discount important messages from the cards because they feel their cards ‘don’t like them’.

Much of this problem comes from confusion because tarot works on so many levels, and can be so amazingly powerful. It is possible for a person who has never seen a tarot card before, and has no idea what the cards traditionally mean, to give a profound reading based entirely on what they see in the pictures and how the pictures intuitively make them feel. It’s also true that there are some very good pro psychic readers who use tarot in their readings without ever having studied the actual meanings of the cards.

Why is tarot such a powerful intuitive tool? I believe this is for two main reasons. The first reason, simply, is the brow chakra, or third eye. The brow chakra supports our eyesight, which views the tarot image. It also supports our imagination, which allows us to connect the image with a story. The third eye is also the seat of our psychic vision, which allows us to connect that story with something happening in life.

The second reason, from my perspective, is the unique thing that tarot has become over its six-hundred-year lifespan. Tarot began as a game which personified and illustrated characters and virtues of medieval spiritual thought. Over time, we found within those characters and virtues archetypes of human experience. Those archetypes can speak about us, and to us, on a visceral level.

The problem comes when we aren’t able to tune in intuitively, perhaps because we aren’t feeling well, or because we are too emotionally invested in the problem we trying to sort out with tarot. It could also be that the problem we are tackling is very complex. Lacking enough intellectual understanding of the cards, we feel disconnected from them, simply because we are, at the moment, disconnected from our intuition. That intuitive disconnection is an unavoidable occurrence from time to time. And, sometimes intuition simply isn’t enough to give a great tarot reading.

Something that exacerbates this problem is the rampant lousy advice that new tarot students should choose as their first deck the cards they feel ‘drawn to’. I have a huge personal dislike for this tired trope. In what other field of study are students told to choose a tool because they think it’s pretty? Imagine a carpentry student being taught that the right hammer for the job is whichever one they find most attractive!

Tarot art is a wonderfully diverse and powerfully evocative thing. Yet, your first deck should be the one you can most easily learn and understand, not the one you find the most attractive. The reward is this. If you develop a solid understanding of tarot archetypes, traditions, systems, associations and practices, you have a lifetime to collect all the beautiful decks you want and can afford. You will discover, too, that only some of the decks you find alluring, clever and beautiful are decks that you like using for readings. You may also find that some decks whose art you don’t really enjoy read magnificently for you.

When we emphasize art over archetype, we start to believe our connection to tarot is with individual images rather than the whole of tarot itself.

Objects, symbols and art all carry energy, and each deck has its own way of presenting the tarot archetypes. It’s also true, and a good practice, that tarotists ceremonially make an energetic connection with their decks. It would be erroneous to say that there is no such thing as a tarot reader’s connection (and therefore possible disconnection) with their cards.

It’s also true that we do make personal connections with individual cards; cards that become our stalkers, our significators, our magickal tools and expressions of our feelings, goals and experiences. This process of connecting with our decks is an important part of being a tarotist.

However, when we are having a hard time understanding a reading, lack of connection with your cards may not be the issue.

When you are giving a great reading, you are connecting with more than your cards.

A great intuitive reading may be informed or evoked by the images on the cards and the way they make you feel. Yet, there is a connection between you and something higher. However you see that mystical connection, be it with angels or consciousness, deity or higher self, I believe that tarot reading is a spiritual process supported by, and evoked by art, imagery, symbolism and the third eye. Tarot reading involves something beyond us and the cards.

I believe that a best-case tarot reading is really five connections. The first three are the connection we make with the images of our deck, the connection we make with the tarot archetypes, and the connection we make with higher consciousness, whatever we believe that to be. The final two are what many newer readers miss; the keywords and associations we connect with each card, and the way we connect what we see in the cards to what is actually happening in life. Without all five connections, your tarot reading isn’t everything it could be.

If you aren’t feeling the flow in a reading as you usually do, stop worrying about connecting to the cards, and think about your connection to spirit. Breathe, and invite your angels, ancestors, loved ones, higher self, or deities to speak through the cards. Consciously take a step away from your own attachments and be willing to hear truth, for yourself or for another.

Over time, take your tarot studies more seriously. Learn keywords for the cards and understand their archetypes. Work with more than one deck to see how the archetypes are expressed differently and add that to you understanding of each card.

Stop judging yourself or your cards for the lack of connection. Use that disconnected feeling to inspire your meditation and study.

Some tarotists will suggest that backing away from tarot is a way to cure this sense of disconnection. If you are anxiously reading on the same topic repeatedly, it might be good to take a break. Otherwise, the best advice is to lean in, study more, practice and expand your understanding of the cards. In each reading make an effort to make all five important connections. I promise you that the results will be insightful and informative.

Musings on the Wheel of Fortune

Something I love about tarot is that any of the seventy-eight cards can provide hours of entertainment and inspiration when we choose to ruminate upon it, research it, observe it closely and meditate on it.

Recently I’ve been fascinated with Major Arcana 10, the Wheel of Fortune.

One of the things I first considered is that the term, “Wheel of Fortune” exists beyond tarot. Was the title of the famous game show inspired by tarot, or is there an older reference to which both Vanna White and tarot owe gratitude?

It seems the concept of a universal wheel originated in Babylon and was developed by the ancient Greeks. The concept of the “Wheel of Fortune” was patterned after the zodiac. It’s interesting to note that ancient Indian art includes a thematically similar “Wheel of Becoming”.

In the medieval philosophy that birthed tarot the Wheel of Fortune (or Rota Fortunae) belongs to the Goddess Fortuna (Tyche) who spins the wheel randomly, causing fortunes to be won and lost.

In the Waite-Smith depiction, we see the words “tarot” and “rota” made of the same letters within the wheel. The Four Evangelists grace the four corners, as they do in the World card. Here, however, they are actively writing their gospels.

My favorite depiction of the Wheel of Fortune is from World Spirit Tarot, where humanity is bound to the wheel turned by the Gods.

While the age of the combustion engine has conflated wheels with transportation and forward motion, there continues to be a spiritual sense of the symbol of the wheel in popular culture. When I think of tarot’s Wheel of Fortune, I often think of two songs; Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat and Tears, and The Wheel, by the Grateful Dead.

There is a certain quality in tarot cards that causes them to behave in a reading much like their classic meaning. The very nature of the Wheel of Fortune is uncertainty and lack of control. Sometimes the message of this card is that anything can happen. In a reading, very often there is a sense that the Wheel of Fortune, due to its capricious nature, could mean anything at all.

When I lived and worked near large casinos, the Wheel of Fortune very often meant visiting the casino, working at the casino, or even developing a gambling addiction.

Recently, I have seen the Wheel of Fortune appear to discuss repetitive cycles, especially in habits and relationships. The Wheel of Fortune can describe the on-again, off-again cycle of a couple who keeps breaking up and getting back together. The Wheel of Fortune can describe the cycle of an addict who keeps getting clean but then falling off the wagon. I have seen the Wheel of Fortune appear for those struggling with bipolar disorder.

At the same time, when well-dignified I often see the Wheel of Fortune as a go-ahead from the Universe to take a risk and know that luck will be with you.

Sometimes I see the Wheel of Fortune as a reminder that no one is better off or worse off than anyone else; we all have our ups and downs.

Once, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Wheel of Fortune appeared to me as I stared at a round church stained glass window, grappling with my mother’s terminal cancer as she was being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Its message was a clear comfort; this is part of life, it’s not your fault, it’s the circle of life (cue Elton John and the lions).

When we contemplate a tarot card deeply, we reveal new avenues for interpretation. My deep contemplation of the Wheel of Fortune has led me to take my time with this card when it appears in a reading. As card Ten it carries the energy of One, offering new opportunities and beginnings, and cautions against repetitive cycles. The Wheel of Fortune is associated with Jupiter, which deals with both luck and law, but tends toward tolerance and expansion.

When the Wheel of Fortune predicts the future, you might interpret it as anything can happen, or that nature will take its course. At the same time, it can comfort you with the knowledge that, even in dark times, luck is on your side.

Further Reading

Community blog

Personal Blog

The Process in a Tarot Card

The Process in a Tarot Card

There are so many ways to understand a tarot card, so many different depictions of the archetypes of tarot, and so many ways to use the brilliant tool that is tarot. Today I am thinking about one particular way to use tarot – to find a process within each card.

I first started thinking about this about ten years ago when I wrote my first tarot poem about the Eight of Cups. That poem is now published in Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology. (You can also read it here on my website.)

It’s still fascinating to me that we can know our cards well, use them daily, and still find in a card, at a certain moment, something we had never seen before, or thought about before. On the day I wrote that first tarot poem, what I saw in the Eight of Cups was a process of healing.

Over the ten years since I first saw a process in a tarot card, I’ve been thinking a lot about how each tarot card might convey a process. We could use this concept in a few different ways.

First, as an exercise in viewing the cards a new way we can look at each card and see the process within it. This is much more than asking what the person is doing in the image, or what the action is within the image. Rather, this is looking at each card as a metaphor for something larger. For example, we often see the Four of Pentacles as being a miser or holding on to resources inappropriately. Yet, when I look at this card with the goal of seeing a process, I might see a process of self-protection such as establishing boundaries or increasing self-care. A card without a person pictured can still discuss a process. For example, the Ace of Wands could speak to me about the process of stoking one’s internal flame.

Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology

Minor Arcana Press

Buy on Amazon

Another way to play with this concept is in divination. If you pull a single card at random and look for the process within it, you might find a reflection of a process you are already doing in your life, or advice for a process you need to begin.

You could also try a two-card spread, with the first card indicating the process you need to begin, and the second card offering advice on how to make it happen.

When we find within each tarot card a process, we make the wisdom of tarot even more pertinent and actionable in our daily lives.

That Time I Walked on Fire

That Time I Walked on Fire

This past weekend I was a headline presenter and vendor at an outdoor festival in Lakeland, Florida. One of the many events offered was the opportunity to participate in a firewalk ceremony. I didn’t choose this activity, but the excitement it generated reminded me of a time at a different festival long ago when I did accept the challenge to become a firewalker.

When I was in my mid-thirties, I attended a naturist gathering in upstate New York along with my husband and some friends. One of the activities available over the three-day weekend was a firewalk. To participate was a huge commitment; there was an extra fee, and the workshop would take the better part of two days. I was surprised and a little reluctant when my husband encouraged me to sign up. It turned out he had done a firewalk some years prior and found it transformational. He wanted the same benefit for me.

The first day my fellow firewalkers and I were greeted by our two instructors and a huge pile of firewood. Over the course of that day we meditated, chanted and eye-gazed. We each adopted a log of firewood on which we wrote our goals for transformation. Since the firewalk was part of a naturist festival, our feet were not the only part of our bodies that were bare. I suppose being nude for this workshop might have been another fear factor for some; I was just relieved I didn’t have to worry about my clothing catching fire!

In a solemn ceremony we started the huge bonfire. We each placed our logs on it, watching our written goals be consumed by the flames, knowing that the bonfire, when hot enough, would be raked into the bed of coals on which we would tread, barefoot.

It took two days to prepare ourselves for the fire, and it took those same two days to prepare the fire for us. The bonfire would become a bed of hot coals, six to eight inches deep, more than sixteen feet long, and many feet wide. In fact, it was so wide that a person walking down the center would not be able to step to safety without having to make another footstep on the coals.

While the process of preparing to face the fire was intensely spiritual, our firewalk instructors also explained the scientific principles that would keep us safe when we walked. Firewalking is not a mind-over-matter miracle. The spiritual benefit of firewalking is the opportunity to face one’s fears and do a terrifying thing while connecting with the wild essence of fire.

As the sun set on that second day, while chanting to a steady drumbeat, each of us mustered our courage to begin the longest walk of our lives. The coals glowed red, with little flames licking up between them. At the side of the course was an instructor with his drum, keeping the pace and the chant. At the end of the course was the second instructor with a hose, ready to cool our feet as we stepped from the coals to the grass.

The thing I remember most was the way the heat from the coals hit my face as I stood ready to take my first step. If the fire was uncomfortably hot on my face, how could my poor, bare feet withstand it? More importantly, how could I find the courage to walk forward when every shred of common sense told me to walk the other way?

That first step was the hardest. As I walked, I could feel the heat all around me. It felt incredibly wrong, and oddly right, to be walking across those coals. When each one of my fellow firewalkers made their way across the fire, I felt their fear, and then their pride, just as I felt my own. Although I cannot now remember the names of many of those who walked with me that night, at the time we felt a strong sense of community and fellowship together.

My first traverse across those coals made me feel so strong and powerful that I went back to walk it a second time. I emerged both times without injury.

This festival happened very early in my tarot career. I had worked a few psychic fairs and developed a few clients, but the concept of being a fulltime reader still seemed like a far reach, or even an improbable dream. Within twenty-four months of taking that stroll down coals my business had grown beyond my need to keep another job. To this day I believe firewalking gave me the confidence to follow my dreams and create my own success. If I had the ability to face the heat and fear of sixteen feet of fire and remain unscathed, what couldn’t I accomplish?

There are many ways in life to confront fear and build confidence. Nude firewalking turned out to be my way. I don’t think I will ever need to do it again, but doing it then created the personal transformation that gave me the ability to live the life I truly want.

Tarot Fusion

I am a Waite-Smith reader who uses some Crowley keywords. This is my confession.

One of the things that separates the Crowley-Harris-Thoth deck from the Waite-Smith deck is the keywords on the Minor Arcana cards. To my knowledge, Crowley was the first to use printed keywords on the cards, though many card designers have followed suit (pun intended). Some decks use the actual Crowley keywords, some don't.

I am not a fan of all of Crowley's keywords. For example, I don't see the Seven of Disks/Pentacles as "Failure". I don't see the Five of Swords as "Defeat".

Yet, there are some Crowley keywords that I love. Those keywords have given me a more complete understanding of specific cards.

My two favorites are "Peace" for the Two of Swords and "Science" for the Six of Swords. I also love "Works" as opposed to "Work" for the Three of Pentacles.

When we look at the Waite Two of Swords we think of decision-making. Adding "peace" to that concept allows for a time when a decision can't yet be made. It gives us permission to be at peace with our indecision as we wait to hear our guidance.

The Waite Six of Swords clearly speaks of sailing toward smoother waters, but how are they doing that? What is making the waters smoother for them? This, for me, is where Crowley comes in. "Science" makes sense when we look at the Waite image. How are those swords staying up in the boat like that? The airy, logical swords are floating above the waters of emotion. For me, the "Science" keyword offers the advice inherent in this card.  When this card appears, I often find that the way to those smoother waters is to think logically, scientifically, rather than emotionally.

I used to wonder if my cherry-picking of Crowley's tarot wisdom and adding it to my understanding of Waite's deck was something of a tarot abomination. Crowley and Waite hated each other in life. In fact, the Crowley tarot was in many ways an in-your-face response to Waite's publication of his deck. I've pondered on the relationship between Waite and Crowley before , wondering what it would have been like if they had had social media.

I have also wondered if my combining of tarot traditions might be frowned upon by traditionalists. It felt a little like invoking Celtic and Egyptian deities in the same ceremony.

Then I thought about my favorite fusion restaurant, where my husband could order steak and potatoes and I could order malai kofta.

There are times when the mixing of traditions and cultures can be confusing at best, and disrespectful at worst. There are other times when the mixing of traditions gives us the best of many worlds.

These days I don't think my brand of tarot fusion is confusing or disrespectful. For me, tarot reading is an operational thing. Whatever gives the best readings is the right thing to do. Adding a few resonant Crowley keywords to my Waite tarot vocabulary expanded my tarot practice exponentially.

This is particularly interesting at a time when many new tarot decks are being published and some of them with slightly (or, in some cases, grossly) different meanings than what we would consider classic.

I have heard a certain tarot wisdom that suggests we learn a deck creator's meanings for their deck, and refrain from using other interpretations. While it is certainly helpful to understand what a deck creator was thinking when they took a departure from traditional tarot, I don't think we are ever bound to a deck creator's concept of the cards.

In some ways, the body of tarot is a living thing. Any new deck or book adds to that body of knowledge.

I think we need to be free to use tarot knowledge wherever we find it, and apply it to whichever decks we prefer, regardless of the intent of the deck creators.

In this way, we allow tarot to be the best tool it can be, which is what any deck creator would want for their creation.