Finding the Theme: A Tarot Exercise

Finding the Theme: A Tarot Exercise

I host a lot of free tarot workshops, both online and local meetups. This gives me an opportunity to see what tarot students are learning and doing, and to offer exercises that can enhance their development.

I’ve been hosting free in-person tarot groups for twenty years in different locations. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of trends in tarot practices come and go.

One thing that seems more prevalent since the modern Lenormand renaissance is a tendency for tarotists to read cards in the particular order they were pulled, paying close attention to the placement of the cards and how the cards interact with each other based on that placement. I wrote something about this in another recent post entitled “Reading Tarot Out of Order.”

It’s an imperative skill to be able to construct a story with the cards that appear in a reading. Over the past twenty years many of us tarot teachers and authors have made a priority of teaching tarot storytelling. I see the results of our labor in most of the tarot students I meet.

Yet, it takes proficiency at multiple skills to create a great tarot reading.

I’ve noticed recently that if you ask a group of tarot students to pull three cards with no position and read them, they will almost always make either a past-present-future story, or an action-outcome story. Those are two wonderful ways to work with a non-positioned three-card spread. If you, as a tarot student, don’t have experience with this method of reading, this is definitely a skill you want to practice and add to your toolbox.

Along with storytelling skills, the skill of finding themes and messages in groups and combinations of cards is important. With this skill, the order of placement of the cards isn’t important, unlike reading with Lenormand cards.

For example, if you see Justice and the Chariot together in a spread, it doesn’t matter which positions they are in or which card was pulled first. Those two cards in a spread together could always be read as the possibility of a traffic ticket.

It’s important to remember, too, that each card in that combination will give other information as well. In a good tarot reading, we will interpret the cards that appear multiple times in a variety of ways.

Some small groups of cards, like my traffic ticket example, provide easy themes, meanings and predictions. Further examples might include the Wheel of Fortune coupled with the Devil to present a gambling addiction, or the Empress coupled with an Ace to present a pregnancy.

The larger trick is to find themes, or a combined meaning, in cards that don’t necessarily go together so naturally.

Here is an exercise to help you learn to do that. We tried this exercise in two in-person tarot groups recently. It seemed helpful to get readers to think about the cards in different ways.

I will share the exercise by doing an example here, step by step. Please do it along with me! If you like, you can share your results in the comments.

First, pull three cards at random.

This is not to be a reading for or about anything, so no need to ask a question or focus on anything in particular. For this exercise, you can ignore reversals and turn all cards upright.

The cards I pulled at random are the Five of Swords, the Queen of Swords and the Six of Cups.

Do not react to the cards as you might in a reading.

Your first task is to make a list of every keyword and key phrase you can think of for each card.

Here are mine.

For the Five of Swords, I have the following: battle, conflict, the need to fight to win, the possibility of loss, mental indecision, a war of wits, lack of internal peace, girding your loins, preparing for battle.

For the Queen of Swords, I have these: adult woman born under an Air sign, widow, widowhood, infertility, woman who tells the truth, woman who is difficult to deal with, nurturing truth, nurturing communication, telling the hard truth, female writer, nurturing technical prowess, nurturing intelligence.

I have these keywords and phrases for the Six of Cups: a return to childhood, reunion, happy memories, childhood home, shared history, a sense of familiarity, a sense of spiritual connection, nostalgia, living in the past, remembering the past, honoring the past.

Clearly, the first part of this exercise is to list all the possible keywords and phrases you can associate with these cards. If you want to Google or consult books, that is fine.

The practice of listing all possible keywords is a good strength-building exercise for two reasons. First, it keeps you from limiting your understanding of each card to a single concept. Second, if you find yourself stuck in a tarot reading and not sure how to interpret a card, listing all the possible keywords will usually get you unstuck when one of those keywords strikes you as obvious and accurate.

Once you have your lists, look to see if there are any keywords that are common or similar between your lists. Then, look to see if there are any keywords that are obvious opposites.

Now, look at the three cards and think about what they have in common in terms of correspondences and images.

When I look at my three cards (I am used the Hanson Roberts Tarot for this exercise) the first thing I notice is that two of the cards are Swords cards. They are all Minor Arcana. There is a Five and a Six so the two numbered cards are in an adjacent place in their journey.

I think about the numerology of Five and Six, going from a place of expansion and difficulty to a place of victory. I think about the nurturing nature of the Queen, but also that the Queen of Swords has suffered, much as the Five of Swords can speak of suffering.

I think of the Six of Cups as dealing with the past, and, and that the Queen of Swords is reputed to have suffering in her own past.

Now, look at your three cards and think about the things that are dissimilar, or in contrast, amongst them.

When I look at mine, I immediately contrast the stark Swords images with the warm, floral Cups image. I think about Swords being masculine and Cups being feminine. I think about Swords as mind, and Cups as heart. When I look at the two Swords cards, I think about the Five as war, and the Queen as peace.

As you can see, this part of the exercise works to create a stream-of-consciousness flow as you consider the cards. This can often lead to significant insights in a tarot reading.

The next step is to consider all the things you have pondered about these three cards, and derive a cohesive theme, question, or message from them.

Once you have derived one theme, work to find at least two more.

Here are mine. First, I landed on ‘The need to heal from the past’. The two others I thought about were ‘fertility issues’ and ‘mother issues.’ Had I confronted these cards in a reading, intuition and context would have determined which of these themes made sense.

Of course, the themes we derive from multiple cards in a reading don’t give us the whole story. We still need to interpret the individual cards to get all the information. Yet, these themes can help us know what further questions to ask. These themes can help us give our client an overall understanding of what they are dealing with. These themes can help us tie the reading up at the end. They can also help provide a context as we interpret the cards individually.

The more techniques we have for understanding and working with the cards, the better our tarot skills will be.

What I Learned from Twelve Days of Tarot Epiphanies

What I Learned from Twelve Days of Tarot Epiphanies

Some of you know that during the Twelve Days of Christmas, December 26 through January 6, I did a daily live broadcast on Facebook Live, where pulled a card looking for a tarot epiphany.

After I did my own card, I spent some time finding tarot epiphanies for others.

You can review these videos on my YouTube channel, or here on my website.

Each day I used a different deck. It was fun to look through my collections and pull out some old favorites, along with some newer decks I haven’t explored well yet.

I asked each person who committed to do the Twelve Days with me to keep track of the cards they received each day. Then, at the end, we would each have a twelve-card spread for the new year.

Here are the twelve cards I pulled, along with some thoughts about them as a spread.

If you did this exercise, please share your cards, and your thoughts about them, in the comments!

Day One: Hanged Man, Morgan Greer Tarot

Day Two: Four of Swords, Crystal Visions Tarot

Day Three: Queen of Swords, Ancestral Path Tarot

Day Four: Knight of Cups, Encore Tarot

Day Five: Knight of Cups, Illuminati Tarot

Day Six: Knight of Wands, Spirit Within Tarot

Day Seven: Three of Wands, Golden Tarot

Day Eight: Strength, Ghosts and Spirits Tarot

Day Nine: Knight of Cups, Hanson Roberts Tarot

Day Ten: King of Cups, Tarot of Dreams

Day Eleven: King of Pentacles, Moonchild Tarot

Day Twelve: Devil, World Spirit Tarot

Seven of the twelve cards were Court cards, and three time the Knight of Cups appeared. To me, the predominance of Court cards offers two important messages for the year. First, I must make serving people my top priority. Second, I must embody the characteristics of the particular Court cards that appeared. Since the Knight of Cups was predominate, that card will be my guiding light this year. I must be a warrior for love.

That’s a huge challenge. I must contemplate how love presents itself, and how to present with love in each situation. I don’t expect to be able to completely live up to that challenge, but I will surely try.

There were more Wands and Cups than any other suit. This pleases me, and makes me think that this can be a year of creativity, as I work to share love with the world.

The two cards in the beginning, Hanged Man and Four of Swords, remind me to be meditative and thoughtful before springing into action.

When I look at the three Major Arcana cards, I remember that Strength is my birth-card, and also the card associated with my rising sign, Leo. That the first and last cards are both Majors seems significant to me. They seem to act as bookends on the reading. I must enter the year with surrender, contemplation and meditation. The Devil as a final card seems to both warn and encourage me. The Devil warns me against obsessive thinking and attaching to things that don’t serve me. At the same time, the Devil seems to encourage me to approach my work this year with a strong sense of duty. I must make myself a slave to my purpose. My purpose, apparently, is to be the Knight of Cups.

For me, this will be about enslaving myself to my love of tarot, my desire to spread good and helpful information about tarot, and to read for as many people, and teach as many people, as possible. And, I must do all of this with genuine love in my heart. In some ways this might be a hard thing to do. Yet, because my love of my work is so very authentic, in many ways it will be the easiest thing I could do.

There is something else that strikes me about the Knight of Cups in this particular context. The Twelve Days of Christmas mark the time from Christmas Day to Epiphany, which is celebrated as the day when those mythical Three Wise Men, or Three Kings, brought their symbolic gifts to the Christ child. Could the fact that the Knight of Cups appeared three times symbolize those three kings, known as Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior, and the three gifts they brought, gold, frankincense and myrrh?

It is interesting to note that today, those three items are still used in the magical rituals of many cultures. I will think about the symbolism of those three magical tools, and how they might enter in to my life and my work this year.

Holiday-Inspired Tarot Activities

Holiday-Inspired Tarot Activities

The holidays offer so many opportunities for exploration with tarot and oracle cards. Often, we have a little time off from work. We are focused on concepts of spirituality. Time spent with family leads to questions about family dynamics. Holiday-induced stress may cause us to seek answers and inspiration. The new year ahead fills us with a desire to make predictions.

No matter the holidays you celebrate, you can easily let those holy days inspire your exploration. Here are three ways to do that.

Look for Holiday Themes within the Cards

How do specific cards reflect the themes, concepts and values of your holiday? For instance, can you see the High Priestess as the Virgin Mary, or the Empress as the new mother of Jesus? Can you see the Sun and the World telling the story of the Winter Solstice? What cards make you think of the Hanukah story, or the seven values of Kwanzaa?

Can you find cards that describe your own family’s holiday traditions, or even the family dysfunctions that become evident during the holidays?

Design Tarot Spreads Based on Holiday Themes

Create a spread based on a Christmas tree, or a menorah, or the winter solstice. Think about the words we use at holiday time and how they can become spread themes. For example, ‘gifts’ can speak of spiritual gifts or talents. ‘Presents’ can talk about our own ‘presence’.

Do a Daily Pull in Honor of a Holiday

Pull one card on each day of Hanukah, or one for each day of Kwanzaa, or the twelve days of Christmas. Keep track of each card and what it means to you. At the end, put them all together to see the story they tell and what wisdom they bring you.

Holidays are literally holy days. Adding divination to your holiday traditions will help you focus on the sacred nature of the season.

When Numbers Repeat in a Tarot Spread

When Numbers Repeat in a Tarot Spread

I recently received an email from a tarot student asking me to comment on a spread he had performed for himself.

In a fifteen-card spread, all four Aces had appeared, as well as the Magician. Though himself a competent reader, he was wondering what my take was on this rare occurrence. I shared my thoughts with him and got his permission to expand on that theme in a blog post.

Rather than addressing only his particular situation, I would like to comment more comprehensively on ways to interpret multiples of number and rank in a tarot spread.

First, when more than one of the same number or rank appear in a tarot spread, it is something to pay attention to. Your interpretation of this phenomenon will generally be in addition to your interpretation of the individual cards. Read it as an extra message.

If there are two of the same number, you can often make a comparison between the two cards. Are they similar or starkly different? For example, if the Ten of Swords and the Ten of Cups show up in the same spread, you are going to want to spend some time figuring out what that means. That message will be substantially different than if the Ten of Pentacles and the Ten of Cups show up together. Two similar cards of the same number will strengthen each other. Two opposite cards of the same number may present a choice, or a progression from one to the other. They may be about switching between two different perspectives. They may describe two radically different aspects of life happening at the same time; a dichotomy of significance.

When paying attention to trends in numbers and rank, the positions the cards fall in, or the specific questions asked, may or may not be a consideration as you interpret the meanings of those numeric trends.

When three of the same Minor Arcana number or rank appear, think about the fourth card that is missing from the set. What is the significance of that particular card missing? What is the message of that predominant number or rank?

When all four of a Minor Arcana number or rank appear, interpret the number itself as a specific and strong message in a reading. This message is made stronger when the corresponding Major Arcana One through Nine also appears.

The message is made stronger still when other Major Arcana cards that break down to the same number are also present. So, for example, the Magician strengthens the four Aces. The Wheel of Fortune and the Sun, also One cards, would make that message stronger still.

To interpret the value of the number or rank, you have to have a clear sense of keywords and interpretations for the numbers and ranks. If you don’t already have this, it makes sense to develop it. This will help you not only when multiples appear, but also in your interpretation and understanding of the cards in general.

For example, for my friend who received five Ones, I suggested that he should remember to be his authentic self. He needed to look for the source or origin of things. He should consider things from their simplest and most obvious perspective. He already knew that the Ones meant it was an important time for new beginnings. I suggested, as well, that the singular thing he was looking for would be found.

If the multiples you are experiencing are from the Court, you might consider that as an indicator of many people in the situation. Yet, each Court rank has specific keywords, just as numbers do. It’s possible that multiple Pages might speak of communication or education, for example.

If you work with a system that assigns numeric value to the Court Cards (typically either Page-One, Knight-Two, and so forth, or Page-Two, Knight-Three, and so forth) you can look at the corresponding Major Arcana cards as well.

Some people associate the Empress with Queens and the Emperor with Kings, and so a spread with Empress and Queens, or Emperor and Kings, would be considered a strong message.

A great tarot reading derives its depth not only from the cards that appear, but also from the trends of distribution that appear in the cards.

Paying attention to multiples in number and rank is a tarot skill that adds a great deal of meaning an insight into any reading that auspiciously contains such a trend.

Some Thoughts on Three-Card Tarot Spreads

Some Thoughts on Three-Card Tarot Spreads

When I took my first tarot classes thirty-five years ago, three-card readings were one of the first things we learned to do, after learning the seventy-eight cards.

Many cultures consider the number Three to be the most powerful and sacred number. We might say that the power of that number is conferred to the reading when we use that number of cards. Perhaps that is one reason three-card readings are so popular.

Three-card readings are a great tool for teaching tarot because it is the smallest number of cards one can use to teach complex reading techniques that connect the cards together to create a cohesive message or story.

Three-card readings can be positioned or non-positioned. A positioned spread is when each of the three positions has a meaning that gives context to the card that falls within in. A non-positioned spread is when you simply pull three cards and find messages within them, without ascribing positional meanings to each card.

It is important to learn to do both kinds of tarot spreads.

Three-card readings, both positioned and non-positioned, are great exercises for tarot students at all levels of study. Three-card readings, both positioned and non-positioned, are a great tool to answer specific questions within the scope of a longer tarot-reading session.

There are many great three-card spreads, such as Past/Present/Future, Body/Mind/Spirit and Morning/Afternoon/Evening. I very often devise tarot exercises that are based on three cards.

When reading a three-card positioned spread, we need to work the context of each position into our reading.

Many people use Past/Present/Future to answer questions of any kind. The technique to do that effectively is to think about how the Past card reflects the situation in the past only if that makes sense in the context of the question. If it doesn’t, use the Past card to think about the energies you are bringing into the situation. Perhaps you have encountered similar situations in the past. Things that have happened in the past could inform the current situation.

The Present card will give direct information about the current situation. What is going on with it right now? How do you feel about it? How does this card match your feelings about the situation?

The Future card will give a prediction for how the situation will resolve or offer advice for the situation going forward. This card may help you make decisions about the situation at hand. Often, a view of a possible outcome can wisely inform our decisions.

When using a non-positioned spread, you have the freedom to move the cards around and see how they fit together in various ways. You can form a story, or a sentence, or you can take aspects of each card and see how they tie in together.

Working with both kinds of three-card spreads builds our skills as readers.

Lately, I have noticed that some readers seem to stop developing skills at this point. They don’t learn to interpret larger spreads, or to incorporate other tarot divination techniques. I notice readers offering three-card spreads in professional settings, and very often complaining that their businesses aren’t growing as quickly as they would like.

If you are a tarot pro and have found a three-card technique that is working for you, that’s excellent. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. But, if you aren’t happy with how your business is going, consider that your reliance on such a small spread in the professional setting might be part of the problem.

I often use three-card spreads in professional sessions, but only as part of the session. I use multiple spreads and techniques in any tarot session, even if that session is a five-minute reading in a party setting.

If you are interested in growing your skills as a reader, or growing your business as a tarot professional, work to master the three-card reading, and grow beyond it. That doesn’t mean you should stop doing three-card readings, it means you should develop numerous divination techniques and learn to combine them as each situation dictates.

Three-card readings are an important tool in our tarot toolbox. But they shouldn’t be the only tool we have.