By Sarah Taylor
Over the years that I have been working with tarot cards personally and professionally, I have begun to formulate in my own heart and mind a set of personal truths about the cards.
In essence, I have come to see these truths as a ‘credo’, the Latin word for “I believe.” Rather than a statement of fact, a credo is therefore a statement of belief. I cannot prove what I believe to be true about tarot, apart from its demonstrating to me time and again that it works. Nor would I want to foist my beliefs about tarot on anyone else, given that what is true for me isn’t necessarily true for the next person: one man’s tool of divination is another woman’s load of hooey. And fair enough: if we don’t have freedom of belief, then we have nothing (or so I believe!).
Moreover, those beliefs have been, and continue to be, subject to change, reinvestigation and redefinition as my work with tarot and my own ideas about divination — and life, really — have evolved. But I thought I’d share with you what it is that I’ve come up with. So far. Feel free to agree, disagree and add your views. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Tarot tells it how it is
I believe the cards we get in any reading are 100% accurate, although this statement comes with a few qualifications:
#1: It is the translation that creates inaccuracies — especially when we are reading for ourselves, and/or when emotions, wishes and expectations start to come into play and are not adequately corralled.
#2: Sometimes ‘telling it how it is’ means drawing our attention to something more important than the current subject of the reading. When this happens, the cards tend to communicate in a bolder tone. Think of it as having a conversation with someone where they need to raise their voice, or wave their hand, in order to be heard: you know who it is that you’re speaking to; it’s just that they have to be more demonstrative because you aren’t quite expecting what it is that they’re saying.
At other times, the cards play what I often refer to as silly buggers: they question the question itself. This happens when we do a reading for the second, third, fourth time in a row because we don’t like the response we’re getting. The cards meet our desperation by becoming increasingly dramatic to mirror the desperation back to us. At this point I feel it’s counter-productive to read the meanings of each card literally because what they’re really saying is a collective “Enough already!” in the best way they know how.