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
This week, we are taking a trip into the realm of the subjective: the use of ritual when it comes to tarot. By “ritual” I mean the way that tarot readers might approach a reading, the ceremony they attach to it, the paraphernalia they use with it.
Ask a group of tarot readers about their own particular rituals, and you will get as many different responses as there are participants in the discussion. Some have reading cloths, others use a favourite table, while others still are happy to lay them down on any relatively flat surface. Some keep their cards in the original cardboard box, while others carry them around in a purpose-designed bag or container. Some let others touch their cards; some view their cards as being completely off-limits to anyone else.
Ask tarot readers what their rituals are, therefore, and you will tend to get responses akin to those above. Ask us why we use ritual, and the discussion tends to ramp up a few notches. Or maybe it’s my reaction that ramps up a few notches, because I’ve found that at the basis of every ritual lies a question that smoulders away, refusing to go out:
What is it all for? Or, more specifically: Is ritual even necessary?
I ask this not because I have an answer waiting in the wings. I ask it as someone who sits in two camps when it comes to the subject of ritual in tarot. I have a purple cloth embroidered with a silver “om” sign; I keep my cards in a velvet drawstring bag decorated with an image of The High Priestess from the Rider-Waite Smith tarot deck; I tend to shuffle the cards and cut them in a certain way; I am mindful of introducing the subject of the reading with due reverence. And yet I believe that all of this is primarily for my own benefit, and no-one else’s. I don’t believe that the message will be any less accurate without them. Oh, the dichotomy!
Which is why, today, I’m inviting you to take part by putting forward your ideas and reactions about ritual in the comments section. To get the ball rolling, here are the two camps that I am referring to — the two seemingly opposed ideas that, together, start to get those questions smouldering in the recesses of my mind.
A disclaimer: these are by no means the only reasons why someone chooses or doesn’t choose to bring ritual into their readings, but they are a particular interest of mine based on what I have been taught, what I’ve heard and what I’ve read from those in the tarot profession.
- Ritual is not only integral to a tarot reading, but necessary. It prepares the reader and clears the psychic space, helping to keep unfavourable influences at bay and thereby maintaining a reading’s integrity.
- Ritual is a fear-based set of objects and practises. It is adopted with the belief that a reading is subject to sabotage by outside influences, when in reality those influences are simply the belief, often unconscious, that there is a separation between reader and the origin of the message. Ritual serves to keep at bay our fear that we are undeserving to receive that message.
I am reminded of the words of a lecturer of mine. She, a seemingly rational psychotherapist and trainer in her seventies, told us how every morning, before she set out for work, she said a little prayer to ask that she not get knocked off her bicycle that day. “I don’t know why I do it! But I’m going to keep doing it, because it’s worked so far.”
And now, with not a little trepidation, I’ll open this up for comments!
— Sarah
I am a weird reader. I got a cheap deck when I was 18 and the Dictionary of the Tarot book. Then I read the definitions, chose the ones that felt right to me for each card and wrote the key words on the card for that definition in ink on the sides surrounding the face of the card. I did that because I didn’t think I could memorize 78 different cards’ meanings just on the pictures alone. I memorized the ten card cross layout and started reading. It was amazing how well this worked. When I do a spread, I only read the words on the card that feel right for the position it is in and the story it is telling overall.
I am actually going to advertise at the local university to do readings at parties; I need the underground money and it is one thing I am pretty good at that won’t take a lot of what little time I have left after homeschooling my four kids, running the household and doing 15 university credits online this semester.
I have yet to get a set, so I’m very grateful for the online spread that Eric has provided. Generally I go over to just click on a solitary card. I think I have done the full celtic spread twice. I see the layout and scan it very briefly for the *one* card to invite me to click on it. It is usually a very quick process, very zen; a total emptying out along with total faith in what comes to speak to me.
I have found it to be always uncannily spot on and the process has only served to give me absolute confidence in an approach that works. I switch off completely any thought processes and breath in trust. The cards that have appeared over these past few months have had a similar theme in their message and always feel just right and fitting. Cyber tarot seems fine for now. Don’t worry, I am contemplating purchasing a set in the near future!
Recently I pulled one up for a friend after a challenging phone call and I was blown away. I had never seen the card yet and it suited her situation *so* completely that it literally took my breath away.
I haven’t dropped in here for a while Sarah, but I *love* your work here . Captivating and generous and inviting. Thank you very much for the guidance and education.
Sometimes I shuffle, sometimes I make a big mess & swirl the whole pack over the floor, then shuffle. & sometimes I just cut. Perhaps it is only ‘clearing the mind’, but I am always waiting for the cards to tell me THEY are ready. Occasionally I don’t ‘hear’ their signal at all, & just pack ’em up. I won’t let anyone touch my cards, a fear that their perceptions might get confused, that they may pick up an alternate vibration. I’ve only ever done 1 card readings for friends over the net, but they have all been spooky spot on!!
I didn’t think much about ritual until I read cards for an old friend. I have a simple routine, I pull a significator if necessary, shuffle the cards myself a few times, have the client shuffle and cut, lay out. I shuffled and gave her the deck and said “shuffle until you feel like you have shuffled enough.” She shuffled once and started laying out cards on the table in no particular arrangement. I said, “woah, if I’m going to do your cards, you have to do it my way. We’ll start over, please shuffle again and then cut.” She refused. So I said okay, I’ll shuffle and she can cut. She took one card off the top and put it on the side.
I decided there was no sense in arguing, I would just keep it as simple as possible. So I just shuffled myself and cut twice to make a three card layout. As I examined the cards and worked out the meaning, she started crying and said the cards were bad. I disagreed entirely, that the cards had a very positive meaning, and I had to take extra time to patiently explain it and neutralize her fears.
I was glad I could give a message of hope to my friend when she was feeling fearful, but I think it will be a while until I read cards for her again.
I tend to think of a ritual as being a way to structure meaning into our existence using some kind of symbolic act. When the meaning behind the act is lost, however, the ritual becomes a formality that is devoid of content. In that sense, the two camps that you identify in your post seem to me to operate as two ends of a spectrum that could measure the level of meaning contained within a ritual. At the end of the spectrum where ritual has become formality, the ritual may indeed serve only as an empty gesture intended to ward off anxiety. At the other end of the spectrum where the ritual remains connected with meaning, the symbolic act indeed does assist with clearing the psychic space and focusing the mind.
As someone who works in a profession that attracts a staggering number of people with OCD, I see rituals frequently being used only as reflexive formalities designed to attempt to repel fear. I think there are many ways to use ritual meaningfully in order to connect with something greater than ourselves, whether that may be community, spirit, or society at large. In this sense, using ritual feels like lowering a barrier in order to merge with a larger collective of some kind. But when ritual is used as a formality to ward off anxiety or fear, it is almost as if a barrier is being erected in order to isolate one’s self from unwanted negative effects. These feel like two very different ways to navigate the world. Personally, I prefer lowering the barrier! I always meditate before doing a tarot reading just to feel connected and clear.
Of course it’s permitted to weigh in, Len! 🙂 Your perspective on things makes a lot of sense to me: if that’s what’s needed to focus and to be consistent, then it works.
The idea of ritual being fear-based comes to the fore for me with those who refer to “negative energies”, and in a context whereby they exist seemingly as independent entities, rather than, say, a lack of focus caused by a heated exchange with the bank just before a reading! In other words, there is no cause and effect; they are simply there and need to be dealt with; in much the same way that some people don’t like using other people’s cards because they will have an “energy” about them. Perhaps another way of looking at this is by seeing it as fear of the ‘other’ – of the shadow within – which is then pushed outside and projected … which is another way of describing that separation between self and source.
Does that make sense?
Hi Sarah,
Please, is it permitted for someone who uses another oracle to weigh in? While not a tarot person (yet), i do have both affinity and experience with the I Ching using the old-fashioned yarrow stick method. First, i like the “for your own benefit” idea. Having a way to tell yourself “now i am doing this” is no different than adopting a professional attitude on the job or an ethic when accepting a role that entails responsibility to others. Second, any routine which assures consistency and focus while reducing extraneous variables is not fear-based, it is respectful and there is no harm done by showing humility and respect when dealing with great mysteries and higher knowledge.