Where is tarot most useful? – Part I

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Over the past several months that I’ve been writing this column, I’ve spent a lot of time on the whats of tarot. What is tarot? What are the major arcana; what are the minor? What are the differences between them? What does each suit represent? What does this particular card mean? What is that reading telling us? All of these are relevant questions that help to enrich our knowledge of the tarot and how to work with it effectively.

Today, however, I’d like to focus on something else: how. How is tarot best put to use? How can it be effective when life places the demands that it does on our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls? How can something small enough to fit in the palm of our hand have any perceivable, or more importantly, meaningful impact on our lives?

In a world where we tend to devote so much of our time to the future — what is going to happen? Am I going to get that job? Will s/he love me? Is my life going to get any better? — tarot has become so strongly identified with its ability to reveal outcomes that we have lost sight of another area where I feel it is far more useful.

Tarot tells us about the present.

“What’s the use of that?” some might ask. “After all, don’t we already know what’s going on right now? Why would I want to focus on the present when I can find out about the future?”

This reaction that I note is hypothetical, but it is inspired by my experience working with clients. It is also inspired by the experience of managing my own expectations of my life, desires and wishes. Believe you me, I know what it is like to be in a situation of painful uncertainty, with significant attachment to a particular outcome and a deck of cards lying around. Whether it is voiced aloud or inwardly, whether it is a conscious thought or an unconscious one, it is a reaction that is often there.

But let’s get back to the present. It is, after all, what we have been given. Right here, right now. It’s worth taking a closer look at it. Often, we want to look into the future because we don’t like what we see in the here and now. Often, it can seem tempting to project ourselves into ‘could be’ and ‘should be’ when life, as it is happening, is as far from pleasing as we would like it to be. And often, tarot becomes a compelling escape mechanism — a spiritual opiate — that allows us to waft on a cloud of ‘what ifs’ rather than facing what is in front of us with full consciousness.

The good news is that tarot is also able to do just that: It is able to help us come to terms with the present, and our own role in it and in our lives, in a way that is both compassionate and constructive.

Tarot can open our eyes to what we know, to what we don’t know, and to what we don’t want to see. And the reason why it is able to do this so effectively is, I feel, because when we work with tarot there is a strong sense of not being alone. Fear is a powerful thing; and one of the most powerful aspects of it is that it separates us. It separates us from others, and it separates us from ourselves. When we feel fear, we are not connected to our hearts and we feel disconnected from our souls, which in turn disconnects us from the experience of feeling at one with our world. We feel at odds with ourselves, that something is missing; and we look to the future to fill that hole.

In that moment when we most need reminding that we are, in fact, perfect and whole — nothing needs to be added, nothing taken away — tarot is there to stand with us and validate our experience, whatever that experience may be. It doesn’t shy away from what is, nor does it judge. It mirrors the situation to us. That might not sound particularly significant, but in the moment when a card is drawn and the truth of something makes itself clear to you, the significance becomes something that is felt and known at a level that isn’t easily reached with words.

When I have been battling my daemons, inner and outer, there has been nothing quite like pulling the 9 of Swords or The Tower to help me feel that I am accompanied on my journey. When I’ve had a shit day and the cards say that, indeed, I am having a shit day, then I am more easily able to sit with it and have a good cry. If things are going well, that too is acknowledged through the cards. The Sun shines on me and through me. When I get the Ace of Cups, I feel the love.

What tarot reflects back to me is the part of me that I had mistakenly thought was missing and I was trying to search for somewhere — and some time — else. I return to myself.

So next time you have an urge, a need, to look to the future, why not think about sitting down quietly for a moment and looking at what is going on right now? In that moment, there is the opportunity to experience that you are not alone; you meet and are reacquainted with yourself. It is from this point that you are in the strongest position to decide what to do next. From there, you can act with more clarity and decisiveness.