Spiritual Enlightenment & Soul Health by Tarot
Tarot readers have been consulted for spiritual guidance and life direction by health practitioners, spiritualists, feminist historians, novelists, artists, film producers and aristocracy for centuries. It is the great philosophical machine, a “map to the psyche”, and an ancient sacred text in the form of cards. Many are skeptical until they experience the power of a reading, and discover its profound spiritual teachings. The Tarot is a set of seventy-eight images, which taken together, depict all the forces that affect human life, along with all the characters, events, emotions, and ideas that provide the material of which human life is comprised. This page introduces you to how these “archetypal Tinker toys” (Cynthia Giles), function as self-awareness, transformational, and healing tools that provide an interface between the realm of imagination, and the material level of existence.
Tarot Card Reader: An Online Tarot Card Reader
How to Read a Tarot Card Meaning
Tarot Decks – Learn More About Them Here!
A classic Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. The deck is divided up into 2 unequal sections; two sets of mysteries or secrets called Arcana. The Tarot is a historical artifact that amplifies natural powers of intuition to assist in uncovering and understanding aspects of past, present and future life. It is a set of archetypal images…
(Archetypes: “a fundamental and generative structure that eludes exact or exhaustive definition” by Carl Jung; “things, an image, an idea, a pattern, which provoke a strong emotional response, yet can never be fully analyzed” by Cynthia Giles.
Examples of archetypes: Crone, Divine Child, Trickster, Magus, Priestess etc.
Major Arcana
The Major Arcana represents opportunities for growth and expanded awareness. It is a spiritual book in the form of cards. The great concepts stand alone; each one is a learning that we universally encounter. Many Taroists believe the Major Arcana depicts the myth of how humanity evolved from the primordial soup to the ordered, material realm we now inhabit.
Myths grow not in soil of any particular place, but in the humus of humanity itself – it is the story of the breakthrough of the sacred into the world.
The Major Arcana depicts the human myth about how consciousness emerged/es from the sea of unconsciousness. Goddesses and Gods depict how we arrived from the unseen world to this seen world – unconsciousness being another word for the unseen world, and consciousness the seen world, suggesting that the birth of consciousness collectively also applies to each of us individually on the journey to enlightenment.
The Minor Arcana
Is comprised of 4 suits of Ace to Ten and People cards – alternatively referred to as “court cards”. The people cards correspond with modern, clinical personality typology.
The Minors teach us a host of lessons, such as,
- How to express our passion without being oppressive to others (Wands),
- How to stand up for ourselves without violence (Swords),
- How to be mindfully trusting and loving (Cups),
- How to revel in our material abundance with an eye to assisting those less fortunate (Disks).
The essence of esoteric teachings, which have been taught to initiates since the dawn of time,
- How the transformation of spirit to material took place collectively, and continues to unfold within each individual choosing to take the journey to enlightenment;
- How the awareness and integration of the opposites within us – male/female, light/dark, ambition/sacrifice, attachment/letting go, moon/sun leads to wholeness, personal power and higher consciousness.
- How the navigation, negotiation and acceptance of the polarities and magnetism, of destiny with character, and of individual with collective needs, carries us inevitably to the sacred experience of bliss,
- How ultimately there is no “getting there” – enlightenment is NOT a Shangri-La at the end of a linear path – enlightenment is a spiraling path that leads to a centre, back out to the edge again, and back into the centre at a higher octave and so on.
The Fool’s Journey to Wholeness
Taroists subscribe to the notion that the Fool (number 0) is the protagonist in the Tarot story which describes and perscribes a journey of challenges, deprivations and rewards leading to ultimately to wholeness. The Fool’s Journey to Wholeness represents a psycho-spiritual perscription that initiates of the Tarot follow to attain enlightenment. Enlightenment being a psychic awareness of oneness, the cycles of birth, death and rebirth, egoless-ness, love, and the balancing of energies – masculine/feminine, black/white, chaos/order, nurturance/self care, love/fear, movement/stillness, doing/being, sacred masculine/sacred feminine.
Just as all spiritual paths have prescribed tests that must be successfully navigated for expanded consciousness, in preparation for the ultimate state of wholeness, so does the Tarot. These expanded states prepare the initiate’s consciousness to manage, and contain the energy surges rising from the personal and collective unconscious. As experienced Tarotists will testify, this movement to expanded consciousness ever spirals around and upward. You continue to expand beyond your first arrival to wholeness – wholeness is a process, not a fait accompli!
Studying the Tarot Impacts on the Trajectory of your Life
In the beginning stages of learning the Tarot back in 1975, I was struck by the “synchronicity” of how appropriate the card would relate to events taking place in my life. At some point, perhaps two or three months into my study, I was confounded by the realization that this was more than synchronicity – this was magic. In awe, I noted a resonance between my Majors work, and my life events.
As I moved into teaching the Tarot it wasn’t long before I noticed that my students were going through the same transformational process in their lives; transforming life events dancing in step with their journey to magical readership. Magical readership is the kind of readership that gracefully and brilliantly combines intuition with Tarot academia, empathy with self-awareness, practicality with frivolity, and Yin with Yang.
Ffiona Morgan, author of the Daughters of the Moon states, “There were times when I feared our intense transformational process would prevent the tarot’s publication. Events in my life and the environment threw boulders in my path at every turn.”
Morgan describes this same process happening to all the wimmin involved in the Daughter’s of the Moon creation 30 years ago and many others have discovered this same phenomenon.
Most importantly, readership is a profoundly relational activity.
Why Kathleen Re-Claimed “Fortune-Teller”
Cynthia Giles, author of two excellent books on the Tarot, points out in her work that women have traditionally been the fortune-tellers while males have presumed the loftier positions as academic esoterics.
The Journey to Magical Readership
is womyn’s journey to wholeness, magic, and enlightenment. There was a time when 99% of Tarot readers were women and 99% of people who go to readers were women. But thankfully this disparity is changing!
People ask, “Why do you think it is that predominantly women go to see a Tarot reader?” There is no scientific evidence that women are more intuitive than men (read Ruth Crocker’s doctoral thesis – women’s ways of knowing – creativity, non-linear thinking) for the science.
The Masculine Path in the Tarot
The Emperor, the Hierophant, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, and The Devil represent the masculine path but they tell a very different tale to womyn. This is why I maintain that it is crucial that Tarotists wishing to achieve magical readership read only decks that are non-racist, non-sexist, non-classist, and non-hierarchal; in effect that we favour only decks that are inclusive. Magical Readership can only be attained with the right tool. Another example is the work Alexandra Genetti has done with the Wheel of Change Tarot. She has feminized her interpretations of the Tarot (as have several before her and since) which is exemplified in her interpretation of the Chariot. Alexandra adds the importance of relationship at this stage; an innovative and woman-centred adjustment to the traditional Chariot divinatory meaning.
“The Chariot card impels us to discover the power within ourselves, not by steamrolling those around us but by using our vital energy toward solutions that are inclusive, productive, and sustainable. These solutions drive the chariot of time to a more beautiful world where respect, love and the natural rhythms of life help us find equitable resolutions of human problems.”
Compared to the traditional interpretations which stress individual success, “Triumph over nature. Providence, war, presumption, vengeance, riot, quarrel, defeat. Accomplishment, readiness to move ahead, overcoming obstacles.”
Why does the Tarot Work in Divination?
No one truly knows what happens to make Tarot readings relevant and accurate predictors of fate. My theory is that, by deciding to use the tarot cards, we contract with the universe (call it divine inspiration, inner self, higher power, or whatever) on a means of communication and a specific language – the language of Tarot. Once you’ve chosen the tarot as your link to the sacred, you enter into a process that allows you to get feedback and information from spirit through the cards. In some way, the force of spirit, or of your deepest, most knowing self, activates your autonomic nervous system to shuffle, cut, and choose the cards that will clarify or answer your questions.
What I do know is that the cards have worked consistently for me, my clients, and my students over the course of 40 years. As long as they’re useful, I keep employing them.
Tarot Course Online
These 5 lessons had been designed for an independent course of study. Following this program, in combination with the recommended supplementary work, you can become a skilled reader.
